How much money will you need if you were lucky enough to live to the age of 90? What about 100? If you stopped saving now and invested, would your retirement nest egg be large enough for retirement?
Our nest egg calculator can answer all these questions and more. Read on to learn how our retirement calculator can help you see if your nest egg is investment ready.
Our nestegg calculator helps you answer many complicated and often terrifying questions about your future:
And this is just the short list of the answers you can get. Retirement is a big deal. Many people view it as when their life really begins.
You owe it to yourself to know if you are ready for your best years.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1579 the first known use of the idiom nest egg referenced money put away and saved for a later date. The term was coined by John Stubbes in his book The Discouerie of a Gaping Gulf.
In 1686, it was used again to reference savings in a message between Locke and Clark.
The allusion is obvious, but the origination is not. Most people seem to think the term came from the practice of putting a fake egg in a hen's nest to encourage her to lay.
But if that theory is correct, where is the reference to savings? Could it be that nest egg came into being separate from this farming habit?
What if the origination is more straightforward than people assume? Maybe it referred to an item you sit on and keep safe, nurture and love until it is big and strong enough to do what it needs.
Just as a mother hen sits on and cares for her nest egg, so to should you.
Statistics show people aged 55 to 64 who have put away money for their retirement have an average of $104,000 saved. Let's think about that a minute.
In 2016, the average household income was almost $60,000. If you are are an average American, how are you supposed to spread less than two years worth of income across 28 years of life?
You can't do it.
Now take the time to understand what we just told you. This average is only for the people who have any retirement savings at all.
Most retired people in the U.S. are living off of Social Security and other money they managed to save over the year.
Unless you are very lucky or excellent with personal finances, based on the above statistics, the answer is probably a resounding no. But before we go on, let us explain a bit further.
Our retirement nest egg calculator takes into consideration several personal factors:
The calculator also takes into consideration investment returns, inflation, marital status and social security.
It combines all these factors to show how much you need to retire comfortably and how much you need before you can reasonably stop saving for retirement assuming you have your money invested.
It goes even further to show how much you are projected to save each year over the course of your planned working life. You can pool all this information together and create a plan to get your nest egg savings back on track.
Well, this depends a lot on how much you have saved and how long you have until retirement
The first thing you need to do is develop a budget for how much money you will need to live on during your retired life.
Next, determine how much of your guaranteed income, like Social Security and pensions, you can use to pay for your projected budget. You can estimate the size of your Social Security checks with our Social Security Calculator.
Now that you know the difference between what you will have and what you will need, it is time to decide how to invest your current retirement nest egg.
If you were a smart cookie and started your savings right out of high school, then a money market account or CD may be perfect for you. They are low risk, but they also have meager returns. The good news is, you have plenty of time before you retire to eke out the money you need for a healthy retirement.
But if you are like most Americans and got started with your savings plan late in life, you may need to consider taking a risk to get a retirement worth living.
Standard bonds are a little better than money market accounts and CDs in terms of returns but are less risky than playing the stock market. Despite the risks involved, stocks and bond funds are the most likely to give you the best return on your money.
The best thing to do is take into consideration how much money you currently have saved and how much more you need to save before you retire. Then decide how much of a risk you are willing to take to get the life you want.
We hope the answer to that question is a solid, "Yes!" But if it isn't, take the time to use our Retirement Nest Egg Calculator to help determine what it will take to make you ready.
In your search for the answer to this question, you might also find our 401(K) Retirement Savings Calculator helpful.
If you found this or any of our other calculators useful, please pass them along to your friends.