With $5 million, based on a median household, you can likely afford to retire at age 60. The only question is how much you plan on spending or what you would like your lifestyle to look like post-retirement.
While the cost of living varies from place to place, a nest egg this size would likely give more than enough money for decades of comfortable living. Even if you live another 50 years, $5 million in savings would allow you to live on $100,000 per year.
If you use that very basic rule, you should plan to live on roughly $160,000 a year in retirement if you have $4 million in retirement savings. If that sounds about right or more than enough, fantastic.
A financial advisor can help you design a plan to pay for a secure retirement. Is Retiring at 55 with $4 Million Possible? The average age at which most people retire is 62, according to a 2021 Gallup Poll. But if you have $4 million in savings, it's entirely possible to retire by age 55.
Types of High-Net-Worth Individuals
An investor with less than $1 million but more than $100,000 is considered to be a sub-HNWI. The upper end of HNWI is around $5 million, at which point the client is referred to as a very-HNWI. More than $30 million in wealth classifies a person as an ultra-HNWI.
Australians wanting to be in the country's top 1% for wealth need to have an individual net worth of US$5.5 million ($8.3 million), Knight Frank's 2023 Wealth Report has found.
Somewhere around 4,473,836 households have $4 million or more in wealth, while around 3,592,054 have at least $5 million. Respectively, that is 3.48% and 2.79% of all households in America.
The answer to this question is a resounding yes! You can retire on five million dollars. You could retire quite comfortably on that amount of money.
If you're currently living a frugal lifestyle and don't have any plans to change that after you leave the workforce, $3 million is likely more than enough.
However, assuming you have as much as $6 million saved, retiring at 65 likely is a viable plan. Is $6 Million Enough to Retire at 65? Huge financial cushion. Having $6 million in savings is far more than most people have, providing higher retirement income potential and less risk of running out of money.
Bottom Line. A $3 million portfolio will likely be enough to allow a retired couple to spend reasonably and invest with moderate caution without any worries of running out of money. However, if expenses rise too high, it's entirely possible to drain a $3 million portfolio in well under 30 years.
Like any basic rule of thumb, this one comes with plenty of qualifications and exceptions, but it can be a useful place to start. Now, 4% of $4 million is $160,000, so as long as you expect your retirement to last for about 30 years and that amount sounds like enough-or more than enough-for you, you're in a good place.
Likewise, while you can probably expect investment returns to be much like they have been in the past, there is no guarantee that future performance will match historical returns. Still, a $3 million nest egg will be adequate to fund a comfortable and secure retirement in the majority of circumstances.
A $5 million nest egg can provide $200,000 of annual income when the principal gives a return of 4%. This estimate is on the conservative side, making $200,000 a solid benchmark for calculating your retirement income versus expenses.
According to the FDIC, the national average rate for savings accounts as of June 21, 2022, was 0.08% (based on $2,500 product tier). So, if you made a $5 million deposit, it would generate approximately $4,000 of interest in a year.
If you purchase a fixed, immediate annuity with a $5 million principal, your monthly payment amount would likely be around $30,000 with a 20-year term and around $47,000 with a 10-year term.
If you want to retire at 60, a common approximation used to calculate the amount you will need to retire is to multiply your after-tax retirement expenses by 15. So, if you estimate you will need $50,000 annually in retirement income, you will need income-generating assets of $750,000 to create this income stream.
Following the 4 percent rule for retirement spending, $2 million could provide about $80,000 per year. That's more than average.
In fact, a recent survey found that investors believe they'll need at least $3 million to retire comfortably. But retiring with $1 million is still possible, even as early as age 55, if you're smart about it. It will require some careful planning since you'll have to wait 10 years for Medicare, but it can be done.
Based on the median costs of living in most parts of America, $5 million is more than enough for a very comfortable retirement. Based on average market returns, $5 million can support many households indefinitely. However, it also depends on your standard of living as every household is different.
You may need less than you think
On the higher end, those organisations recommend individuals to save $545,000 to $745,000 in super by ages 65 to 67, for a comfortable or high-spending retirement. The only scenario where $1 million is set as the savings goal is for a high-spending couple in retirement.
For many people, $2 million in retirement savings is plenty. Some can achieve a peaceful retirement with as little as $600,000. However, some people may need $5 million or more to live their preferred post-retirement lifestyle.
To feel wealthy, Americans say you need a net worth of at least $2.2 million on average, according to financial services company Charles Schwab's annual Modern Wealth Survey. But even if you have that much in the bank, it might not be enough to be considered rich in certain places, the survey found.
People with the top 1% of net worth in the U.S. in 2022 had $10,815,000 in net worth. The top 2% had a net worth of $2,472,000. The top 5% had $1,030,000. The top 10% had $854,900.
“Several experts on retirement have given various estimates about how much you need to save: close to $1 million, 80% to 90% of your yearly income before quitting work, and 12 times what you used to make annually.”