How To Deal With The Reality Of Not Saving '$1 Million'

aka, this is how you live the semi-retired life, practically, on the ground

I put $1 million in quotes because it’s sort of a dying, if not dead standard. The idea that you need $1,000,000 to traditionally retire—as in quit work altogether.

People still in hot pursuit of the goal often—and quickly—realize that a million bucks might not be enough to sustain them for a 30-plus year retirement, especially if they spend like a person with the firepower to save that kind of cash in the first place. We run the math on this predicament in a minute. Because it’s math you don’t tend to see in the financial media. Because this reality can get in the way of cookie-cutter “solutions.”

Many of us who realized there was no way we would ever save seven figures abandoned this non-strategy in favor of not only more realistic goals and objectives, but a better way of life. One that gets us off the personal financial hamster wheel and headed towards a more comfortable life now and for the duration. We’ll also detail the quantitative side of this seemingly qualitative equation.

It’s sort of like the way many, if not most of us thought growing up. That if we made $100,000 a year, we would have made it. It’s an idea that still lingers. Earning six figures.

When you realize the out-sized effort and degraded quality of life that often goes hand-in-hand with keeping this pace—over long periods of time—you ask yourself, is it worth it? When you see that you need a roughly $140,000 annual salary to be able to afford the median priced house in America today, you ask yourself this question again.

At this point, $100,000 ceases to be a status symbol or rite of passage; it becomes the baseline cost of doing the business of life.

What kind of funny business—or life—is that?

If you answer the poll questions—don’t worry—nobody, including me, sees individual results. It’s all in the aggregate. That said, there’s no shame in not meeting the media- and mega retirement industry-driven $1 million benchmark.

The reality is that most of us won’t save $1,000,000 (you know the numbers on retirement) or make six figures consistently. At least not if you aim to live a life you love that’s not dedicated solely to work you don’t love or even like.

So, what to do?