I am wondering how many folks followed the experts advice on how much was needed for Retirement and now find themselves woefully short.
I don’t think that’s going to be extremely common. I have been modeling my retirement since I was 25 in 1986, by hand on paper, and on an inflation adjusted basis I’m exactly where I thought I would be, 36 years later.
The free planning software from Fidelity and Schwab and Firecalc will get you into the ballpark if you don’t feed bad or nonsense inputs into them. I have been using those for 20 years. The models and projections have been getting better and better, tighter and closer to reality and retirement date 12-31-24.
Do you know anyone who face planted, and if so, what “expert” advice were they using?
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From memory, it seemed almost none of the experts counted on continued growth of your personal retirement accounts. It was like when you retired, you put your funds in a mattress. In moderately conservative mutual fund, you should see continued growth of 7-8% or better. If your RMD is around 4%, your balance continues to grow.
Also I like Wes Moss’ plan of multiple income streams, not just SS. I’ve got a small pension from a fortune 50 company that covers our food bill every month, my SS, the wife’s SS, she still works a few hours each week, I still work a couple of days each month. That’s 5 streams of income each month. Haven’t touched my personal retirement accounts and don’t plan on it until RMD kicks in.
Probably the biggest factor is I’ve had no debt in at least 20 years.
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You’d have to be a lot more specific about which experts and which advice. If you mean simplistic rules not based on your actual projected expenses like “you need ten times your income”, then sure those people may be way off target because their benchmark was irrelevant. If you mean “save half of what you make, put it in a Roth” those people are doing fine.