How much money do you need so that you can spend $10,000 a month after taxes every single month throughout retirement? When you are retiring early, none of us know how long any of us are going to live, but the last thing I want to have happened is that you run out of money or that you retire too early and you can't spend what you want to spend. So in today's podcast episode, we are going to explore exactly how much money you need so that you can spend $10,000 a month. And I'll give you a few other examples as well. Now, today's episode was prompted by a listener question, another great question. So thank you guys for submitting your questions. I feel like I truly have the best podcast listeners in the world because I listen to a lot of podcasts myself and they'll say yeah go

submit your question but I know I personally never do because I just don't think it'll get addressed

however I want you all to know when you submit these questions I am literally trying to make this

show as effective for you so I'm going to give you the straight answers of hey you want to spend

10,000 month or 8000 or 5,000 here's exactly how much you need and then during the latter half of, hey, you want to spend 10,000 month or 8,000 or 5,000,

here's exactly how much you need. And then during the latter half of the episode, I'm going to walk you through the math of how I get there. Because I know some of you are just like, just tell me the answer. What do I need? Others of you are going, hey, I want to really know how this works. Where are you coming up with this. So I want to make sure both of you, if you can put yourself in one of those buckets, are getting the answer that you want. So this listener question comes from George.

I'm going to read this question now. And George says, feel free to use my name, love the podcast, and thank you for the information. You're welcome, George. I'd like to spend $10,000 a month from my basic projections, it seems I can do so, but I'm not sure. I want to retire early, and I know this money

will be needed for some time. Health isn't the greatest, but want to plan for age 95, just in case, please tell me how much I need. So great question from George who says, I want to spend 10,000 months. Now I'm going to make some assumptions here. And the first assumption, George, is that you want to spend 10,000 a month after taxes adjusted for inflation. So you want $10,000 every single month, almost think of it like a paycheck, and you can go spend that however you see fit. It can go towards a mortgage payment. If you sell a mortgage, it can go to travel, it can go to whatever you'd like, but you want a paycheck to spend $10,000 a month after taxes or $120,000 every single year

in retirement. Now, I'm going to tell you just a real quick answer, George, which is you're not

going to spend $10,000 every single month, even if you think you will, you won't, because I have

clients right now who are retired early, and they're spending than 10,000 and they came to me wanting to spend 10,000 and I'm encouraging them to spend more because in the years you have your energy and health, I actually want you to. I just want you to do it sustainably. No, you're not going to run out later. And too many people do not give themselves a bonus when markets are doing well because they're worried when markets don't do well, oh my gosh, am I not going to be able to spend then if I spent too much at the beginning? And I don't want them to think that way either. So what you have to do is have a plan that tells you during what time of the market when it's doing X, Y, Z, when can you spend a little bit more, and when can you temporarily scale that back? And that's called the guardrails approach to spending. So that's one thing I'm going to address at the end of today's podcast. But what I really want to make sure you're all taking away, because I'm sure at some point, you're thinking, yep, similar to George, I want to spend 10,000 month or 5,000 or 8,000 months. But I've got a quick fun fact for you all and the fun fact is if you're

thinking through what is the average cost of retirement this comes from the bureau of labor statistics

the answer is fifty two thousand dollars now that's a good place to start but a lot of you

want to spend a whole lot more than that and a lot of you want to spend i'll say a little bit more

than that it's very rare that I'll see

less than that. So sometimes people are coming to me and I'm just going to kind of take away a few

myths real quick because I want to give you these straight answers. Trust me, I get it. I listen to

podcast as well. But I also want to make sure you are not thinking about any what I call head trash.

So a lot of people are coming to me for guidance. And sometimes I'm telling them, here are five things I want you to think about. And here's a hundred I don't want you to think about. So here's the big one. Okay. If you are going online and you see an article that says you need a million to retire or two million or five million or ten million, they are all wrong. Okay Now, they're all wrong, not because they're bad people

who are writing them, but they're wrong because they have no idea what amount is coming from Social Security. They have no idea if you have a pension. They don't know if you have rental income. They don't know what you want to spend. So by just saying, hey, you need a million bucks to retire. Some people will come to me and they're like, hey, I just don't think I'm on track. I've only got 8,900,000.

Do I have to work five, 10 more years?

I go, depends.

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