This article presented no analysis or insight whatsoever. It just is a few paragraphs presenting raw results of survey data and a pull quote from a finance guy essentially saying “YMMV.”
It would be helpful for people to have something about retirement expense rates, lifestyles at different income levels, the burn down rates of people retiring today and projected future costs, and so on.
I mean, I’m American, so it wouldn’t apply directly to me anyway, but it’s something I think about more and more as I get closer. I’d retire today, if I could. I do have a fair amount of savings, and if I was willing to retire someplace inexpensive I might be able to pull it off today, or in a couple more years at most. So I’ve been doing my own research there (including looking at golden visa programs in case US politics continues on its current path), but I like to hear how others are thinking about it as well.
There’s another type of citogenesis going on with articles and internet comments. Writers look to social media to see what people are talking about / what will get engagement. Internet commenters talk about the article taking the points that strike a chord. Writers see what the users are talking about and write about that. Internet comments react. Writers see the comments and publish accordingly. Rinse. Repeat.
Some iterations later people have piles of articles to point to as proof. The articles have been repeating back their own words written by someone else with ostensible credibility because it’s been published.
A major problem aside from that itself is internet comments need to boil everything down to simple one liner takes. The world isn’t simple like that. People could do long form investigative journalism. And then the internet comments would boil it down to a single easily digestible take that washes away all analysis.
Agreed. The headline is extremely misleading clickbait.
This piece is reporting on what people think they need, not what they actually need (which is highly context dependent), which by itself isn’t very interesting.
The real story is the huge divergence between what people say they need vs what they’re actually targeting, but that’s not news, we’ve known about it for decades (basically every since the defined benefit pension plan ended).
The headline is extremely misleading clickbait. This piece is reporting on what people think they need, not what they actually need
The title says “Canadians expect they need $1.7M to retire”. The title says exactly what the article says, and incorrectly claiming it to be misleading diminishes the conversation here.
And the first paragraph of the article uses the word “believe”, which has a much softer connotation.
The subject line strongly implies that Canadians did the math and “expect” to need $1.7M for retirement.
When you look at the actual article, it’s simply an opinion survey reporting what people said, answers for which could be the result of anything from a rigorous financial plan all the way to a finger in the air guess.
So the headline implies a great deal more certainty in the quoted figures than is actually indicated in the article or supportable by the data.
In short: no, I stand by my claim the article headline is absolutely misleading.
I’ve heard 4% rule, but for myself I use an investment firm that does monte carlo projections, with ages, spending rates, and current assets to give you a rough idea of likelihood of assets lasting till death.
Ive also played with a few of the retirement calculators made by the FIRE crowd i.e. https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/beyond-4-rule-how-much-can-you-spend-retirement
