Calculating annual investment to meet retirement goal. Use Worksheet 14.1 to help Georgia and Jude Sullivan determine how much they need to retire early in about 20 years. Both have promising careers, and both make good money. As a result, they’re willing to put aside whatever is necessary to achieve a comfortable lifestyle in retirement. Their current level of household expenditures (excluding savings)

is around $75,000 a year, and they expect to spend even more in retirement; they think they’ll need about 125 percent of that amount.

(Note: 125 percent equals a multiplier factor of 1.25.) They estimate that their Social Security benefits will amount to $20,000 a year in today’s dollars and that they’ll receive another $35,000 annually from their company pension plans.

Georgia and Jude feel that future inflation will amount to about 3 percent a year, and they think they’ll be able to earn about 6 percent on their investments before retirement and about 4 percent afterward.

Use Worksheet 14.1 to find out how big the Sullivans’ investment nest egg will have to be and how much they’ll have to save annually to accumulate the needed amount within the next 20 years. P=9