How is your bank account?

NBC's Rory O'Neill asks the question...Do you have enough money for retirement? Well, it all depends...

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sixty six in the morning, Mike Elliott, Columbus Morning News

(00:02):
on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line. Rory O'Neil,
NBC News Radio. It's the million dollar question, Rory, Do
I have enough money to retire?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's about a two million dollar question. Actually that's the problem,
and a lot of households are figuring out that, you know,
enough may not be tucked away to have that comfortable retirement.
And the company called Day four says, we are the
trend is heading in the wrong direction as more workers look.
It makes sense that the more money you make, the
more money you have to put away for retirement. But

(00:33):
what we're seeing though, is those middle income people fifty
to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, their contributions to
their retirements are also shrinking, from about nine percent, or
for almost ten percent, closer to nine percent. And that
one percentage difference over time can make a huge difference
when you're talking about decades.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Well, there's so many factors too. You know, when did
you start to save for retirement? How much are you contributing?
And probably the biggest factor is what kind of lifestyle
do you want to lead?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
One you hang it up, well, exactly what's your health?
How many of there are you know, what's your living situation?
Do you own already? Are you still paying a mortgage?
There is no one answer for everyone, and that's also
what makes us complicated. But it's also now the responsibility
of the worker. You know, back in the day fifty
years ago, everyone worked for private companies that included big

(01:21):
pensions for them as you left, and that just doesn't
really exist anymore in the public sector. So now the
burden has shifted to the individual for them to figure
out their own retirement, and that can be complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
So you said it's the two million dollar question. Is
that kind of is that sort of a soft working
number there where most folks say two million is enough?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, really more of a reference to the spike in
inflation we had a couple of years ago and the
fact the prices having come down and the cost now
of that retirement is going up significantly. You know, the
cost of housing, the cost of medical care, whether it's
going to be a nursing home or some assisted living center,
all those costs have gone way up, which is why

(02:05):
lots of recommendations for extended care kind of insurance programs
in order to provide that buffer. Yeah, there is no
As I said, there is no one single answer, one
single dollar amount out there. But chances are it's more
than you think, which is why people are encouraged to
seek some professional help when trying to figure all this
stuff out, knowing that, hey, social Security isn't going to

(02:28):
be enough no matter what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah, well that's for sure that it's only part of
your retirement there.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Rory.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
How's the real estate market in Orlando. I've got my
eye on the prize. I want to head your direction someday.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
We are seeing some softening when it comes to the
condo market, in particular because of new laws and all
the new fees that are going into it. I mean,
these maintenance fees are one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars
a month and they ain't going down in the future.
So that's a lot of people are bailing on the
condo that they bought.