Think $1 Million Is Enough For Retirement? You are Wrong.Jeff Berwick Everybody would love to become a millionaire, retire without a worry and spend the rest of your days on earth having fun. Theres just one major problem: $1 million dollars is the new middle-class. Do you have it in an IRA? Well, the government might be interested in confiscated it. In a domestic bank account? Well, legislation has been written legalizing a possible future bail-in. Some of the retirement money sitting in your account could be shaven drastically. Thats what has happened in Cyprus. How about a devaluation? Thats what the people of Ukraine are suffering through as I write. In 1953 the movie How to Marry a Millionaire was out in theaters. $1 million back then bought the equivalent of $8.7 million today (based on manipulated government numbers, which means it actually buys much less). $1 million wont even buy an average apartment in Manhattan today! Why isnt $1 million worth that much anymore? Inflation. The Federal Reserve is printing billions of dollars every single month! Ultra low interest rates in bond markets have also contributed. Unfortunately for US citizens, they will be the victims of a crisis which is only going to get much, much worse. People dont have the money to start saving in the first place. Theyre too busy keeping up with an extravagant and over-inflated lifestyle, taxes, fines and what have you not. On top of that, the United States has chosen a geo-political strategy that has led the rest of the world want off the US dollar. They dont want to use it anymore. China is buying lots of gold. Russia is threatening to abandon the dollar altogether. Thirty years ago, $1 million was a huge amount of money, says Haitham Hutch Ashoo, CEO of Pillar Wealth Management, in Walnut Creek, Calif. Today, given todays lifestyles and costs, it isnt so much money. It translates into $40,000 to $50,000 (annually) in sustainable revenue, says Joe Heider, regional managing principal for Rehmann Financial Group in Westlake, Ohio. That is not that much money on an annual basis. Even if people try to tighten their belt and only live on essentials, the reality is life today comes with all sorts of new types of expenses increased medical expenses, taxes, and of course food inflation. To make things worse, the days of pensions are long gone as well. The only money most Americans will have is that money they have saved. At the end of the day, if you want to have a quality retirement, to do what you want to do, I think you need at least $1 million, says Michael Wall, president and founder of Wall Financial Group, in Altoona, Pa., and Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. A lot of my clients are 50-plus, he says. They are still from a world where they have a small pension. Some have real estate. Then theres Social Security. A lot clients are in a place where they have lived below their means. They can live on a million. Not everyone will have $1 million, he says. They will not have the ability to have as many choices, to do and go and buy and travel. I definitely would suggest that clients shoot to have at least that much. You are talking about 30 or 40 years of unemployment, called retirement. THE BOTTOM LINE There is some good news in all this. There are more millionaires. More than 9 million people in the US have $1 million or more. But lets forget about $1 million for moment. After all, $10,890 is the median financial net worth of an American household today, according to an economics professor at New York University. This is poverty. Most Americans are living in abject poverty. If they are not, they are still borrowing just as before the 2008 banking crisis. Governments have no qualms stealing money. As we wrote earlier this year: Then of course there is MyRa in the US. Obamas plan to help people save. The gist? You give the US government your money, and at the end of your life, they give it back. I am sure people are running to open up their very own MyRa account. ACTION ADVICE The old way of savings wont work into the future. In fact, neither will the old ways of working. As Wells Fargo found last year retirement is a 20th century relic. As you can see, quite a few people in a recent poll dont believe they will ever retire: So why bother with it? Forget retirement. You should be after something more meaningful anyway. Retirement was a concept developed in the twentieth century to keep people working as long as they possibly could in anticipation of the promise they could sit around and do nothing at the end of their life. For me, the concept of retiring is a lot like heaven. Pretty silly. I dont ever plan on retiring. But why would I? I love what I do. I wasnt scared to take risks and try for something more than my teachers were trying to prepare me for (a lackluster life). I chose what I wanted to do in my life and I did it, and I had a lot of success. I dont need to retire. I just need to keep being productive and everything else will fall into place. That is unless I make dumb decisions like buy government bonds, keep my savings in a western-based bank account or invest in the stock market via some liberal arts educated money manager. Instead, during this, the most dangerous time in history for human capital, I have to think on my toes. Ive learned a lot of things throughout the years, and thats why I started recommending precious metals in 2009. I wasnt only recommending precious metals, but I was recommending you store those metals abroad. Many experts, like Jim Rogers and Marc Faber, have echoed that sentiment. Thats why we prepared a globe-spanning report called Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge, which will help you do just that. Want to ensure that death is not your personal retirement? Click here. Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankinds two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV Media Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the worlds freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business. 