In article ,
"Irreverent Maximus" wrote:

"dadiOH" wrote in message
...

Maybe but remember, a lot of that money is in:
'30s,'40s,'50s,'60s,"70s" etc.. dollars.

What would that money (in present day dollars) be worth
if it was put into a modest investment?

When I was in my eary 50s (I'm 80 now) I figured that if I could stop
paying
SS and use the same amount of money as self investment I could accumulate
enough by retirement to pay myself what SS would have paid but WITHOUT
diminishing the principal.

An easy, approximate way to figure a future value is to divide 72 by
whatever rate of interest you receive. The result is the time in years
that
it takes for money to double if there are no withdrawals and if the
interest
is compounded. For example, if you are getting 6% interest then the money
will double in 12 years; at 10 %, in 7.2 years.


If believe the general number is 2% return on SS, and 10-15% on private.



Depends. Most blacks and hispanics have a negative return of their SS
investment since they tend to die earlier. The Boomers may come close to
2% but those coming behind us, will probably have negative ROI across
the board. The S&P has generally run 8% return for every 20 year period
since WWII. Dividends on the S&P (even over the last 10 years or so)
have added around 2% or so to the base return. The best bet is when you
reinvest the dividends. I actually broke even with the reinvested
dividends between 2006 and 2010.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein