US. How Far Does $1 Million Go in Retirement?
A million dollars—it has a nice ring to it. But as Dr. Evil learned after spending 30 years cryogenically preserved, it may not be enough—for many people, certainly not enough to comfortably retire on, depending on where and how long they live.
A new report from GOBankingRates measures how long a million dollars would last for retirees 65 and older, state by state. It did that by multiplying the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ mean annual expenditures for that age group by a cost-of-living measure for each state, provided by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. The tally separated out annual spending on health care, housing, groceries, transportation, and utilities.
The upshot: If you want to stretch your dollars as far as they can go, you need to head down south.
These are conservative figures. They don’t factor in any entertainment or travel, which would make for a pretty grim retirement. Nor do they take into account how inflation might cut into purchasing power as we age. Inflation can take a bigger bite for seniors, because medical costs, which may account for a bigger chunk of expenses, have an inflation rate significantly higher than that for the broad economy.
Read full news here: Bloomberg
