Could you live on $1,400 a month? That’s about what the average retired worker receives from Social Security today.
You’re probably going to need a lot more than that to live on when you retire. How much more? One rule of thumb is to figure you’ll need 70% to 80% of the income you expect to be earning at the time you retire. And you could need that income for a long time. On average, a 65-year-old man in the U.S. has a life expectancy of close to 83 years, and a 65-year-old woman can expect to celebrate her 85th birthday.