The Worst Things About Being a Millionaire
The Worst Things About Being a Millionaire
Kiplinger's Personal Finance | June 14, 2018 Updated for 2019
Who wants to be a millionaire? The more intriguing question would be, “Who doesn’t?” For most people, a million smackers conjures up images of vacations on the Riviera, Arabian racehorses and mattresses stuffed with freshly ironed $20 bills.
But being a millionaire today isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Low interest rates and high living costs mean a million bucks in the bank doesn’t necessarily allow you to retire at 35, 45, 55 or even 65.
What’s worse, today’s million dollars comes with all the burdens of wealth: greedy relatives, rapacious lawyers and grasping investment advisers.
A Million Isn’t What It Used to Be
Financial advisers say a sustainable annual withdrawal from retirement savings is 4%. With a million-dollar nest egg, a 4% draw-down means annual income of $40,000. And that’s before taxes. If you stick with the 4% withdrawal rate and earn an average 8% on your money annually, you’ll be in good shape for the long run.
But can you really live on $40,000 a year? Most millionaires don’t want to. “If you are 45, 50, 55 years old and spend like a millionaire, then you are doing two things with your money that may well not work for you long term,” says Tom Davison, a financial planner in Columbus, Ohio.
“The first is not saving extra dollars now, and the second is establishing a lifestyle cost that, for most people, will be hard to cut back on later.”
That being the case, let’s say you pull $100,000 a year from your savings, you earn 8% a year, and you don’t adjust upward for inflation. Here’s how your account would fare: at the end of Year 1, you'd have $972,000 left; Year 5, $835,735; Year 10, $594,376; Year 15, $239,741; and Year 18, $0. Yup — broke in retirement.
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6 Common Excuses for Not Saving Money By Tara Struyk
Have you ever settled on a new exercise program, only to get a bad cold a few days in and happily throw yourself on the couch, relieved to have a handy excuse? Excuses must be human nature; I know I usually make them when I'm facing something that’s new, that's hard, or that I just don’t enjoy. And I’ve certainly made excuses when it comes to money.
In the years that I’ve been writing about personal finance and investing, I’ve also heard my fair share of excuses, mostly from readers who don’t agree with my advice. The problem is, unlike good financial habits, excuses are easy to come by, even though most of them just don’t stand up to reason. Check out some of the ones I’ve heard most frequently so far.