From Market Watch —
In honor of April, which is financial literacy month, Google unveiled the 10 questions that Americans ask most about retirement.
The question Americans ask the search engine most often about retirement: “How much do I need to retire?”
10 most-asked retirement questions, past year U.S.
1. How much do I need to retire?
2. How to retire early
3. When can I retire?
4. What is the retirement age?
5. How much to save for retirement?
6. How to save for retirement
7. How to retire at 50
8. How to retire
9. What is full retirement age for Social Security?
10. Where to retire
Answering the question of how much you need to retire is complicated. For years, many experts threw out $1 million as a figure we should all aim for. And according to a survey by personal finance site Nerdwallet, half of Americans think that $1 million will be enough to live on in retirement.
But as I recently reported for MarketWatch, most people won’t be able to retire the way they want with just $1 million: “With people living longer with the advances of medical care and the higher costs of living, a million dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to,” Mitchell C. Hockenbury, a certified financial planner at 1440 Financial Partners, told MarketWatch.
For her part, finance guru Suze Orman says the magic number is $5 million or more — and MarketWatch reported that some people agree with that number, while others think that figure is far too high.