Retirement is a touchy subject, especially in the United States, where reports of students crowdfundiing for teachers are greeted with warm fuzzies despite being an unmistakable sign that something has to be done to improve the current system.
The average retirement account balance in the United States has decreased by 19 to 23 percent between the fourth quarters of 2021 and 2022, and retirement savings have been generally lower this year than in either of the previous two years.
NetCredit used Numbeo’s statistics on the global cost of living to calculate how far a US dollar savings account would go in different countries during retirement. They did the maths based on the national average retirement age of 61 and the national average life expectancy of 76.15 years to determine what it would take to retire in style.
Lessons Learned
Countries in Asia and Africa, such as Pakistan, Egypt, and Algeria, have some of the lowest retirement costs in the world, at around $225,000 or less for a decent retirement.
Retiring in Singapore is the only country where you’d need more than a million dollars, while in the United States it’s only about $700,000.
It would cost you nearly $900,000 to retire in Hawaii, the most expensive state in the United States. Yet, in 39 of the 50 states, the cost of retirement was less than the targeted $700,000.
