One of yesterdays threads had a sideline regarding retirement and the amount of income that the average person will need in retirement. The conventional wisdom of the last 30 years or so has been you need the same income in retirement as when you quit working, my question was why? How can that advice possibly be one size fits all? If a person needs the same income in retirement as they need during their working and accumulating life then they must not be financially able to retire and need to keep working, or, they are already living above their means and cannot cut expenses. My Wife's Grandmother lives on $800.00 per month of Social Security and saves around $300.00 per month, she has a paid for home and no debt, ever, she never took a pill until she was 92 and had a heart attack, she pays for her medicine out of her SS, no medicare prescription plan, some may say she must not live well but they would be wrong, she has 60-70 thousand in the bank and eats what she wants and goes where she wants, she has lived frugal all of her life and that did not change when she retired. I know a lot of people who have delayed retirement for a variety of reasons but mostly because they want to make more money, many of them will kick the bucket and never enjoy much of that money or the free time it should have bought them. I have a pension made, have saved money all of my life and have retirement accounts, in other words I have done what I need to do to take care of myself and mine, some say inflation will get you, well, if inflation is that high after I retire then interest rates on CD's ought to be back at 20% like 1980 to make up the difference.