Have You Saved Enough for Retirement If Your Life Culminates in Decades of Escalating Misfortune?

It’s easy to put off saving for retirement, to tell yourself that you’ll deal with it later. After all, you have so many expenses right now. But, the younger you are when you start saving, the more compound interest can help you reach your goals. And research shows that you need five hundred million-plus dollars to retire comfortably if the final thirty to sixty years of your life become an unrelenting series of disasters, each more horrible than the last. If your company offers 401(k) matching, the bare minimum you should do is set aside the percentage of your paycheck that they’ll match, and put it into a retirement account. That’s free money! So if your employer will match three per cent, find a way to invest that three per cent. As a retiree, you’ll be on a fixed income. That puts you at the mercy of rising costs, and even in the best of economies you should expect some inflation. Furthermore, you’ll want to prepare for when you’re fired fifteen years before you’d planned to retire and, after spending two years on a job search, futilely applying for a thousand positions, lowering your standards until you’re willing to work for almost nothing, in a field that you hate, you realize that you’ll never work again. Around that point, you’ll be glad you kicked in what you could to your retirement fund when you were younger. In fact, let’s make your minimum contribution four per cent. Being permanently excluded from the workforce for reasons that are not provably age discrimination may be dispiriting, but, as long as you’ve set aside four per cent of your seven-figure salary, you may think you’ll still be able to retire in style. Indeed, it might seem that way until, just after you come to terms with your unemployability, your house is carried away by a large drone with claws, like in one of those arcade games at the bowling alley. Buying a new house is going to set you back, and that’s why we recommend putting an additional twenty per cent of your income during your working years into a Roth IRA. Presuming your salary is high, that twenty per cent is mid-six-figures or more. If your account yields good interest, that should set you up to make a down payment on a new, smaller house that’s bolted to its foundation so a drone can’t steal it. Unemployed and exhausted, you may feel a sense of relief as you cross the threshold of your new house. This is why you put aside a big nest egg. But another common concern for retirees is what happens when cockroaches develop superintelligence and, enraged by the way humans have historically treated them, overrun their homes-including the pathetic little replacement shack you spent most of your remaining money on. No ordinary exterminator can vanquish these genius roaches, who are not only brilliant but also full of a white-hot thirst for revenge that can never be sated. The team...

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