[Dusty_Star]

Originally Posted by MandoMan

Being a millionaire may seem rich to you, but it isn’t if you have only one million and want to pass it on to your children. It’s said that you can generally take out about 4% a year and do that. Let’s say you have one million, so you can take out $40,000 a year from your mutual funds. You also have $30,000 a year from Social Security. But your mutual funds firm automatically takes out 20% with every withdrawal for taxes. That’s $8,000, leaving you with $32,000. Then you get taxed on your entire Social Security income because your supplemental income is more than $25,000. Let’s say that works out to $5,000 of your Social Security that you lose, though it may be more. Those two are $13,000 subtracted from your yearly $40,000. So that million dollars is only adding $27,000 to your Social Security.

Thanks to the effects on the stock market of Covid, Ukraine, supply problems, etc., your million dollars has also decreased by 30% total. So ideally you shouldn’t take anything out until that goes back up.

Having TWO million instead of one should help a lot, but the number of people here with two is much smaller than the people with one. (And those who had three million last year May have only about two million at the moment.) If you have a million dollar house and drive a BMW or two, you should probably have four or five million. That’s an even smaller number of people.

Agree. A million sure isn't what it once was.