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how much do you think it costs you every single month to live? I think I'd say about 7000. Your expenses are not $7,000 per month. They are almost $10,000 per month.
Hi Suze. My husband and I are in our 40s, married 17 years with two kids, ten and 14. We're on opposite sides of the fence on how we think we're doing. I think great. He thinks not so much. Our goal is for him to retire in 17 years at age 65. We then sell our primary home and downsize. I would really love to have the time and money to be able to travel. Suze, how are we doing?
Hey, Maureen, how are you doing tonight? Hi, Suze, how are you? I'm great, sweetheart. So we have a little bit of a disagreement between you and your husband? Oh, yeah. So not a little, big? Is it big? No. We just never agree on finance. So he thinks you should be saving more. You think you're doing fine. He thinks that you're not going to be able to retire in 17 years if you keep this up. Is that right? And you think you will? That's correct.
All right, girlfriend, let's see how much you really know about your numbers. You have $352,000 in retirement. You have $107,000 in an emergency fund. That looks pretty good. You have $44,000, almost $45,000 in investments. Your current homes, you have two of them. Their values are worth together $850,000. You have mortgage debt of $259,000. Maureen, can you tell me what your net worth is? I believe it's about a million.
All right, so you got that right so far. How much do you think it costs you every single month to live? I think I'd say about 7000. Your expenses are not $7,000 per month. They are almost $10,000 per month. So you have an excess of $965 per month, not the almost $3,000 per month or more that you thought you had in excess.
Now follow me here. 17 years from now, your vacation home will be paid off, correct? Correct. So the $9,800 a month in expenses that you have right now, about $2,000 of that is for the mortgage of that home. So let's bring your expenses down to $7,800 a month. If you continue to put the amount of money that you're putting into your retirement accounts, you will have $1.1 million in your retirement accounts. Okay. But after taxes, that is only going to generate for you about $3,000 a month in income. Now we can add his $2,200 a month of Social Security on to that. Now we're at $5,200 a month. We're still almost $3,000 a month 17 years from now from meeting your goal.
So if I were going to give you a grade for can you attain your goal, living the lifestyle that you want to live, keeping two homes, traveling the world and doing everything? I would give you an F. You not are. You aren't even close. So first of all, I am so with your husband here. I cannot even tell you. You need to listen to him. So you're short, but if you're willing to make some changes in order to maintain your goal and achieve it, here is your way to an A. You ready? I'm ready.
Here's what you need. You both need to do wills and trusts. Number one, you need to increase your term life insurance from $100,000 that you currently have to $1 million. He needs to increase his $600,000 of life insurance, his term insurance to $3 million. You need to increase the amount of money that you are putting into retirement. You need to decide at the time he retires, do you want to sell the home and buy a littler one, or do you want to sell that home, take all of that money, add it on to your retirement, and go and live at your house at the shore? Now you only have one piece of real estate, one set of expenses. You have extra money that you can now travel the world. You do not need two homes when you're in retirement mode. When we're cutting it this close, that is your way to an A. If you stay doing things the way that you're doing it and not make one change at all, girlfriend, you have so flunked out of this, I can't even tell you.