Knowing how much you should be saving for retirement can be confusing. So how do you begin to calculate how much you'll need to retire comfortably after your working years are over? Since different people have different retirement goals, there really isn't a conclusive answer.
While you may prefer to meet face-to-face with a qualified financial professional, you can also take advantage of the many online retirement calculators. You may choose to use them get a better idea of what you should be saving to stay on track, as an indicator to determine if you need to seek some financial assistance - or both. However you decide to use them, you shouldn't rely solely on these (or any) online calculators or website to give you all the answers.
The following are three online retirement calculators that you might want to “kick the tires on” before deciding on which one works best for you.
Online retirement calculators
- The Market Watch calculator allows you to enter a variety of data such as your current assets, future income, and estimated retirement income. Based on this data, you can immediately see how long your income may last and to what age this income will be sustainable.
- The Vanguard Retirement Income Calculator works on a simple to use sliding scale that can show you how much money you might need in retirement and whether or not you're on track. By comparing what you have now to what you may need to retire on, you can visually identify where the gaps are and begin to make changes for the better.
- Out of the three, the CNN Money Calculator is one of the most basic of the online retirement calculators that can help you better estimate how much you should be saving to meet your goals. It considers your age, projected retirement age, and how much you have saved to date. Once the numbers are in, you'll have a savings rate that will indicate what percentage of your income that you'll need to be putting aside for your golden years.
These are just three of the many easy to use retirement calculators on the Internet that may be just what you need to get on the right track, and to save more for your life after work. But remember, the best rule of thumb is to begin saving early for retirement. After all, there's no time like the present!
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