How big a ‘nest egg’ do you need to retire?

[MSNBC]

How big a ‘nest egg’ do you need to retire?

By focusing on spending needs, you may be able to do better than you think

By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC
updated 7:45 p.m. ET, Mon., Nov. 5, 2007

For millions of Americans, retirement planning is all about accumulating a “nest egg” of savings and investments to generate enough income to pay for a comfortable standard of living after they stop working. The quality of life in your golden years, this line of thinking goes, is determined almost solely by how well you’ve estimated the size of the nest egg you need and how close you get to accumulating it.

But this process, especially as applied by the trillion-dollar financial services industry that many would-be retirees turn to, often raises more questions than it answers — some of which are unknowable. How long will you live? Will stocks and bonds perform as well in the next 25 years as they have in the last 25? And what happens if your retirement coincides with a period of high inflation that takes a big bite out of the spending power of your hard-earned nest egg?
...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21548538/