Personal Finance

My retirement calculations suggest I need $7 million to retire - am I overlooking any large looming expenses?

Maurie Backman

Published: March 6, 2025 8:51 am

Retiring can be an exciting thing, but also, a scary one. After all, you’re giving up a steady paycheck and are agreeing to live off of the money you’ve saved — however much that might be.

Of course, the more savings you have going into retirement, the less nervous you might be. And the couple in this Reddit post are clearly in a good place as far as their savings go given that their projected assets come in at about $7 million.

But they’re also wondering if they’re overlooking some key retirement expenses. And the answer is, they might be.

Retirement expenses that can creep up on you

As you get closer to retirement, you can generally get a pretty good sense of what your recurring expenses will look like. Say you have a paid-off home and know how you want to spend your days. Let’s also assume you’ll also be staying in the same area you’ve lived in for a while, so you know what costs are like there.

You may, after running the numbers, determine that you need $6,000 a month to cover your basic expenses, plus another $30,000 a year for travel. That’s an easy enough budget to work with in theory. But it may not be accounting for larger expenses that pop up during retirement.

Take home repairs, for example. As properties age, things tend to go. So you’ll need to make sure your budget can handle a $10,000 repair — or perhaps many of those if you intend to stay in your home for the rest of your senior years.

There’s also healthcare to account for. Fidelity puts the average cost of healthcare in retirement at $165,000 for someone who’s 65 years old with average health. But if you end up falling ill or having surgery with a complicated recovery, you could be looking at more substantial healthcare expenses.

Then there’s long-term care. It’s a scary thing to think about, but many seniors end up needing some type of long-term care in their lifetime.

Genworth puts the average annual cost of a full-time home health aide at about $75,000 a year. Meanwhile, a private room in a nursing home costs an average of about $117,000 per year. And these are only averages, which means your personal costs could be higher. So it’s important to account for these and other expenses that might arise in the course of your retirement.

Talk to a professional so you have a plan

If you’re retiring with a large sum of money, it may be that you have more than enough funds to cover unexpected retirement expenses. But if you want to be sure, sit down with a qualified financial advisor and ask for their advice. A financial professional can walk you through different scenarios and make sure you’ve prepared adequately.

A financial advisor might also have suggestions for defraying certain retirement expenses. For example, there’s long-term care insurance to help pay for expenses like nursing home care. Having the right conversations ahead of retirement could help you approach that stage of life with more confidence.