Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
You seem to have a better sense of it than me. Can you put some ballpark numbers on what you're thinking?
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All right.
Let's start by positing that the average vintage collector is around 50 years old. We can argue about whether that's too low or too high, but I'm guessing it's not too far off the mean.
Here in the US, if you look at incomes for people who are that age, at the 75th percentile, you're at $112.5k, and at the 25th percentile, you're at $38k. Naturally, if you're in a high cost area, these numbers will shift up, and probably not by a little in some cases.
For the most part, you're looking at a 10-20 year investment horizon before they start drawing on their assets, although in some cases they might need those assets for upwards of 50 years. So not crazy conservative in their horizon.
In terms of retirement assets at that age, the stats I'm seeing suggest that the 75th percentile has about $300k invested, and the 25th percentile has about $1k invested. Obviously this is going to exclude things like your personal residence, etc, and just be focused on more traditional retirement assets. For those who are fortunate enough to have one, I can also strongly suspect that these stats don't include the value of a pension.
A bit of a caveat - I'm inclined to suspect that the venn diagram circles for the Average American and the Average Vintage Cardboard collector don't overlap perfectly, as we probably skew a bit more towards the top of the range rather than the bottom, simply because we have a nonzero amount of cash to blow on frivolities like old cardboard.
How do those stats strike you? Aside from the 25th percentile of Americans being totally hosed on their retirement savings (which might describe more of us than we're willing to admit), and my supposition that we skew a bit more towards the top of the range, I would guess that those stats are generally in the right ballpark for average.