I came across this “ING Your Number” marketing ploy the other day and thought it was perfect for a light Friday post :) Although “ploy” probably isn’t the best term to use here, more like marketing genius! Create a fun financial game for us nerds, and then have everyone blog about it! Haha… it’s a good thing we love you ING.
But yeah, after giving it a spin myself, it looks like my “number” (Retirement Number, that is) is $2 million $652,000+. That’s a LOT! But then again, my end goals are probably a bit more extreme than the average American out there (as you’ll see below).
Here are the questions they ask you, along with the answers I gave. Feel free to fudge the ones you don’t know and just do your best. Some of them were harder than you’d expect!
What’s Your Retirement Number?
- How old are you? 30
- Are you married? Yes
- What’s your current household income? $100,000ish. This fluctuates on the Mrs. side projects @ Grad school, along with all my side hustles.
- At what age do you plan to retire? 40 :) Although the better question to ask is, “At what age would you LIKE to retire, even though you’ll continue working on stuff you love anyways?” I personally want to be as close to financially free at 40 as possible. Which means no worrying about money, and lots and lots of meaningful work! Or travel, or whatever my old heart desires.
- How much annual income will you need during retirement? Yeah, noooo idea. I put down $60,000 but it’s really a shot in the dark. I’d have to run the numbers and really think about this one a bit, but it sure ain’t happening right now. I’m way to relaxed on this Friday to work that out ;)
- Provide income through what age? Again, no idea! And really it’s kinda freaky if you ask me, haha… I had 80 down there but then realized it would mean I would die at 81, so I changed it to 99 :) I feel like I’d be happy going right before the big 100, wouldn’t you?
And then wha-bang! Out comes your “ING Number.” Obviously it’s not a perfect science (esp with those last 2 zingers), but it does give you an idea of the things to think about when you’re planning ahead like that. The age you retire at and the length you live are very VERY important! Same with your lifestyle at the time and a billion other things especially like your health. But this is supposed to be quick & fun so I’m sure a lot of them were left out on purpose.
The message at the top summed all this up perfectly: “The earlier you start thinking about your future, the easier it will be to reach your number and enjoy retirement.” YES!!
And now it’s your turn :) Spend the minute and a half filling the answers out yourself, and then come back and drop your number in the comments. No signing up for this or that or anything, just use ’em and lose ’em and then come back to big poppa ;)
———-
PS: My Money Blog’s number is $2,048,822.00
PPS: Consumerism Commentary’s is somewhere around $3,000,000
PPPS: And I think I have some ING Referrals left if anyone wants one. It gets you either $10 or $20 for free just for opening up an account, I can’t remember the exact details but just email me if you’re interested and we’ll make it happen. j (at) budgets are sexy (dot) com.
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I love calculators like these. The only problem I have is that I find it difficult to figure in my pension (and my husbands pension). As much complaining as I hear about government pensions, surely mine must be pretty decent. DH works at CocaCola and his pension looks pretty good too.
I like that “ING number” concept. My number was way lower but probably has the same attainability level as most. I hope all goes well and you DO get to retire at age 40. That’s a rarity in the world today. But it is an awesome goal. So with 10 years of working left in ya, you’d better step up ya game and double ya hustle if ya wanna make dat money!
I think I have an unrealistic expectation because my number was 4.1 M! LOL! I agree with Tiffany that I don’t know how to figure in the pension. My husband works for Johnson and Johnson and they have some formula that they use based on your salary the last number of years of work less something about social security. The formula already includes a different factor for pre-2005 employment and after and I am sure it will change again. I don’t even understand the formula to figure it out. LOL! The only thing that I can do is just look at the pension as a bonus and save from there. With only about 150K in retirement accts now we have a lot more to save! :)
I am married and I only used my income and “my number” is $3,521,687… I don’t think this is a very realistic calculator, otherwise I am in trouble!
WOW! $1,574,867! As a single girl, this is an ancredibly daunting number. But accroding to the numbers I used I’ve got another 33 years to stash away that much. Maybe it’s possible!
$1,709,555. Looks like I have some saving to do. :)
1.9 million for me with a pension of 1k a month in retirement (36 years down the road though, who really knows what kind of pension will be available). Without the pension I’ll need 2.9 million.
Like MK said, I’m glad I have 36 years to do all this saving.
1,543,201…..that’s a lot for someone who isn’t married! Maybe I should lower my standard of living in retirement?
My number was huge. How long did you put you would live until and how much would you receive annually? My number was 3, 199,000.
2,716,466 that is if I retire at 65 and live to 100.
This depressed me! :) My number was $4.6M! Yeesh…$60,000 a year from age 60 to 100.
My Number is $2,546,875. I’m going to start hustling just a bit more now!
My number is $4M and I’ve got 33 years old to go (If I retire at 60 y.o. until 100 y.o.)! That was pretty fun, but kind of daunting at the same time.
I use ING for my savings because, like in your previous post, it’s so hard to w/draw money from an online financial institution. It takes 3 business days for transfers/withdrawals to process, and since there are no physical banks, I’m too frugal to pay ATM fees to cash money :) Thanks for sharing!
You only put in $60k? That is going to be some pretty skimpy retirement funds for someone to retire at 40! ;) Heck, you make way more than that now don’t you? Like twice that in family income?
My number was $4,134,947. *dies* I JUST started saving literally yesterday.
Sucks to be me. Single, 25, I put retire at 65 and live to 90… my number is 3.5 million.
My number is $2,617,018. I wonder what factors they are using to come up with this number. All my calculations are a little lower (about half that number in fact)…What do they assume to be the growth rate of your investments in retirement for example. Anyway it would be nice to retire on that number and not have to worry about the growth rate of my investments in retirement. Good luck to everyone in reaching their “number.”
my # was $9,771,000…WHAT?! Something is WAY wrong…but fun, nonetheless. I can never resist calculators like these :)
Mine came out to a hair over $3 million.
I plan on crushing that number, though. :)
Yeah, these kinds of calculators doesn’t account for everything of course, but I think it’s still interesting to see what we might need one day to reach our goals. It’s definitely a slap in the face of reality!
The only sucky part I see here is that these large a$$ numbers can def. scare you off. Who wants to start saving when they know they have $4.23 million to go? ;)
Highest # so far: Donkee w/ $9,771,000! Haha…
Lowest # so far: Rob w/ $1,543,201
@Que – Well I figure if I’m blogging full-time then I don’t need to retire anymore ;) It’ll already be a perfect situation!
@Rachel211 – It’s true – we make almost double the $60k retirement salary that I plugged in when calculating this for myself. We can honestly live off of much less if we really tried hard. Right now we like our luxuries in life though, but I feel like when retirement time comes we woudln’t need all of that stuff, right? I could be totally wrong though…. I didn’t calculate any #’s to get at $60k, kinda just plucked it from my head ;)
My number was $2,256,009, but I was more conservative with how long I will live. I only said that I would live to be 80.
Mine was almost $2.8mil. I said I wanted to retire at 50. :)
I still think I’d be fine with just $1 Million. But maybe it’s all in my head? :)
I like stuff like this only if it inspires me challenge the assumptions that the programmers are making here. This one is pretty good in that respect.
The main assumption is the ‘how much do you need per annum?” question. Entirely subjective and based on perhaps a hundred variables.
Hopefully this will make people think about what the delta between their needs and wants really is. Will you own a home? Will you travel much? RV around the USA?
btw- I recently turned 40 and could technically ‘retire’ now if I wanted to (albeit after liquidating a few assets). I never plan on retiring though. Retirement is a myth. The goal should not be to retire from work but to become financially independent to the degree that you can contribute to your community(whatever you choose that to be) for the rest of your life. Sometimes this contribution is compensated, sometimes it is purely volunteer. You want to set it up so that you get to choose what is right for you. Choice is better than no choice.
After all, contribution, charity and helping others is what it is all about.
-WR
J. Money, You are well on your way to the $1,000,000 mark. It’s the excellent habits you have put in play, not the amounts, that matter most in wealth building.
Love the way you think, man! It’s true – I totally want to “retire” only in the sense that I can contribute back to society and make it a win-win-win situation! Haven’t heard it put that way before, thanks :)
Coming up with a “number” is one thing. What is really important is to track your progress against that number and make adjustments to your overall strategy (investment allocation, retirement savings, etc.) based both upon your progress and any changes in your circumstances. This is the essence of true financial planning.
yup! very well said, sir.
Apparently, we need 13.5 million dollars…
Yikes. Better start saving ;)