{"id":2027,"date":"2016-07-31T19:51:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T02:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2016-07-31T19:59:33","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T02:59:33","slug":"retirement-myth-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=2027","title":{"rendered":"Do You Know Your Number?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x150131.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x150131.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"mb_color_bestyearsblog-150x1501\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2030\" \/><\/a>Retirement Myth #5: You\u2019re ready to retire when you know your number.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the retirement books I\u2019ve read agree with this statement; however, they rarely agree with each other on just what that number is. One says, before you retire, you need 80% of your annual, preretirement income; another advocates 115% (all that traveling).<\/p>\n<p>One books says you\u2019ll need eight times your yearly salary in assets; still another says one million should do the trick, and a third tells of clients who are waiting to amass five, even 15 million (yep, it makes me sick, too).<\/p>\n<p>However, Ernie Zelinsky (whose How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free is currently #1 on Amazon) says they are all wrong. \u201cA rigid retirement ratio\u2014whether it\u2019s 80% or 105%\u2014is irresponsible and misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zelinsky points out the obvious. Someone making 800K a year could probably do fine on 25% of that, and one who makes 5K a year will have a hard time making it on 150% of that.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if choosing a number is where we should start anyway. Wouldn\u2019t it be better to begin with a plan? What are our dreams? What assets do we need to achieve them? What are we willing to change\/give up to make it all happen?<\/p>\n<p>And the answers to those questions will not come from a retirement book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retirement Myth #5: You\u2019re ready to retire when you know your number. Most of the retirement books I\u2019ve read agree with this statement; however, they rarely agree with each other on just what that number is. One says, before you retire, you need 80% of your annual, preretirement income; another advocates 115% (all that traveling). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2034,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions\/2034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}