On average a person needs $94,248 per year to retire comfortably in DC and the average retirement age is 67

It would have been interesting to know about people who retire at 67, if it’s people who need the money vs. those who work in niche fields that truly interest them vs. those who made work their entire life and have little else to do.

Does this include Chuck Grassley?

We aren't a state.

[deleted]

Dc isn’t a state. I guess “Madison trust” is filled with people who don’t dot is and cross ts.

Thank you for calling it a state.

Does this include Diane Feinstein?

NOVA also happens to have several of the wealthiest counties in the country. It’s all no surprise

Underrated comment but let's not forget about Diane Feinstein as well now.

This is heavily skewed by the fact that DC is a city and all the other states including NY, CA, and MA have areas that are a lot cheaper than DC, despite having cities that are more expensive than DC.

Doesn’t surprise me that DC has a much higher average retirement age with the concentration of “knowledge professions” where people continue working much older.

The cost of retirement thing though is just another example of the “ranking a city as a state”

[deleted]

this is probably a bimodal skew. Ward 3/6? Successful law partner that refuses to retire. Ward 8? Service worker.

But honestly, DC now is skewing more to the successful professional if you look at average wages of the employed.

My dad is almost 80 and he's totally passionate about what he does, he works in academia. Everyone who knows him says that cant imagine him retiring. He's really sharp and healthy so he doesn't seem that old, I think his passion keeps his brain young.

> this is probably a bimodal skew.

Exactly. There’s two or more hidden groups that lumping them together accurately describes neither. There’s no “why” to any of this analysis, just that people are generally older when they retire, and if you retire here then you need a lot of money.

This is the first time I've seen a post use the flair "compares DC to states" because it is a common issue in this subreddit that really annoys me. At least this time OP was self aware.

At the same time, it's the type of work. There aren't nearly as many jobs here that require high levels of physical exertion. It makes sense for a lumberjack to retire early, but a lot of jobs here both require a lot of training and, at the same time, have limited demands. If you have a job that requires a doctorate, you enter your field at around 30, while a blue collar job you can enter around 18.

[removed]

Why does someone who's retired still need to put 20% into savings?? These metrics make little sense. Also, social security doesn't seem to be factored into the number.

This is 100% a valid question. I know some elderly lawyers that seem to never want to retire. They could financially they just don’t want to.

A lot of people who “retire” from a formal career also do go back to some type of job, start a small business, or even just work part time because they need something to fill the time

Quite true. I would expect NYS to rank high but there are very wide rural and LCOL swaths of NYS where living is pretty cheap.

I mean average wages don’t necessarily tell you that much, one person making $1m and nine making 0 is an average salary of $100k

It’s also a bad analysis in that it doesn’t show if these numbers reflect rental or homeownership as part of retirement. Additionally there are other factors to include such as state income tax etc. how you retire looks very different than say a billionaire or someone on food stamps.

yup, hence my comment about the bimodal skew. I could have clarified saying average wages by sector or neighborhood.

Most of my neighbors are retirees and I am so envious of them. Bought their houses many years ago so they are probably paid off. They stay inside all day unless the temperature is above 80. They get a regular box of food from the food bank and give us the leftovers. We are walking distance to a library and Rec center which they don’t use. Sometimes the man will put on a bunch of gold rings and a velvet tracksuit and drive somewhere. The wife has a friend who picks her up for yoga. They hate the birds that visit our bird feeder. They have the best life.

I just wanna give a shout out to 'bimodal skew', the stats nerd in me appreciates this so much.

But DC isn't a state, so how can we be the second most expensive state to retire in - ?

That and a major player in DC is the federal government and we see many just refuse to retire and keep working

I thought old people liked watching birds. Thank you for feeding them.

That's not what it's saying, but I can see how you could interpret it that way since it's not well written.

They say that they took the total annual costs of groceries, housing, transportation, health care, and utilities, added those together, and assumed that those core expenditures probably equated to around 80% of what you actually spend, so they added an additional 20% that you needed in savings to have enough for your actual annual expenditures, which would include stuff like clothing, haircuts/personal services, dining out, gifts, non-local travel, etc.

Not a state.

69 — nice 👍

(I felt compelled)