It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you

with advice and information that empowers you to make better financial decisions in your life.

So how much do you really need to retire? It's a question that people focused on financial independence

later in life and not having to work the rest of your life, really think about. And the answer

is so variable, it's surprising.

I want to tell you one way to really think about it that makes a huge difference.

And later today, we have had so much inflation in the restaurant industry.

I mean, just try to imagine what it's like being a restaurateur today

with expenses across the board, not just food, having gone up so much,

but the customers are in a squeeze play.

So the restaurants are in a squeeze play that suddenly you and I as

consumers are starting to get the better deal. I'll tell you what I mean later in this podcast. So the question

of what you need for retirement does not have one automatic answer because a lot has to do

with lifestyle you're used to living. But what's so significant is how different the amount of money

it is you need to have in retirement, depending on where you choose to retire.

Americans are much less mobile than we used to be. But once we're not working anymore or preparing

to not work anymore, that's when one of the most important things for people

to think about is where you're going to decide to live on the money you have for retirement,

because there's such a giant difference in what it costs from one place to another. I've talked before in the past

about people who are moving to foreign countries for retirement. And for a lot of Americans,

that's a bridge too far, but one that now people in the millions are doing living elsewhere in retirement because

their money goes so very much further. Lane and I have a friend who has not been able to save

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