One of the hardest parts about retirement is understanding exactly how much it will cost to meet your needs.

And if you just rely upon conventional wisdom that your expenses in retirement might be something like 70% of your current income, this is likely going to lead you astray.

So today I'm going to show you how you can get an accurate sense of retirement expenses.

And I'm going to walk you through a real example to show you how that then leads to a full retirement income plan. I also have an added bonus so I'll be given you,

so be sure to tune in and learn how you can use this to make the most of your retirement.

This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, James Cannell, and I'm here to teach

you how to get the most of life with your money.

And now, on to the episode.

What you'll see on today's episode is that dialing in your true retirement expenses is foundational to getting your retirement strategy right. This impacts everything from your

cash flow to your investments to your tax strategy even. And although it doesn't have to be

perfect because we can never predict exactly what retirement will look like, it is important

to get as close as possible. So what I want to do today is go through an actual example to show

you how I might do that or how I'd recommend

you do it so that every other aspect of your retirement plan can be addressed in the appropriate

manner. Today's episode is based upon a listener question. This question comes from Gigi. Gigi says

this. She says, hi James, I recently discovered your YouTube channel and you've helped me think

differently about retirement. Thank you for that. My husband is 58 and I'm 56 and we are planning to retire in the Philippines in

four years. We presently have a combined income of $397,000 and we continue to contribute $39,000 per

year to our TSP retirement investment. We also each max out our Roth IRA contribution with Vanguard

with $6,500 each. Our monthly expenses total around $12,400. We own a home in the Philippines with no mortgage.

By time we retire, we would still have a 19-year-old son who are planning to send to college in

Manila and we have some

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