How Long Will $1 Million in Retirement Savings Last in Louisiana?

What do you plan to do when you retire? Will you fish the bayous of the Atchafalaya Basin? Will you visit the casinos at Coushatta, Paragon, or those along the Red River in Bossier City? Do you plan on growing Louisiana strawberries in your backyard? I guess the answer to all of those questions depends on one thing. How much money does it take to retire "comfortably" in Louisiana?

Most of us actually have no idea what the real answer to that question happens to be. Just ask any financial planner from Lafayette to New Orleans to Monroe and Shreveport and they will tell you that most of us have no idea how we are going to fund our golden years.

So, if you don't have a financial plan for when you stop working and the regular paychecks become monthly stipends from the federal government you really need to talk to somebody. However, if you ask most folks what they think is a good number to use when planning their retirement they'll say one million dollars.

It seems like a lot of money. It was certainly a lot of money to me when I was a kid watching Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies and his "$50 million" in the Commerce Bank on TV. But just how far will one million dollars actually take you into your retirement years in Louisiana?

The folks at GoBankingRates.com, a personal financial site, took a look at the question "How long will one million dollars in retirement savings last in each state". As you might imagine there are some states where the "golden years" might last only as long as "The Golden Girls" TV series lasted. By the way, Blanche, Rose, Sophia, and Dorothy graced your TV screens for seven years.

Fortunately in every state in America if you retired with one million dollars in savings you could watch the entire seven-year span of The Golden Girls series. Now if you retired in Hawaii you would get that seven years and still have two years left for some 227, Amen, or Empty Nest. That's a long way to say one million bucks in retirement savings will last you about nine years in Hawaii.

Massachusetts is another state where you'll need to "die young" to stay solvent. One million will only last 11 years there and also in the District of Columbia. In California your million-dollar nest egg will give you a dozen "golden years" and a few extra months.

How Long Will $1 Million in Retirement Savings Last in Louisiana?

If you want to know how long your money will last we need to know what you're going to be spending it on. The folks at GoBankingRates used these categories, groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, and healthcare costs to arrive at the number they used for this survey.

According to GoBankingRates.com, you can expect to spend about $4,500 on food, $9,400 on housing, $3,500 on utilities, transportation costs run about $4,600, and healthcare costs a $7,400 expense. That's an annual expenditure of a little over $52,000.

If you divide that into one million here's what you get. In Louisiana if you retire at the age of 65 with one million in retirement savings that should last the average resident 19 years and 26 days. So if you retired at 65 your bank account would dry up just after your 84th birthday.

Use These Louisiana Retirement Figures For Estimations Only

Obviously, there are going to be other expenses and perhaps other sources of revenue that will either enhance or depreciate your retirement years. I know I wouldn't count on the federal government to be there with social security. I also wouldn't head into retirement without some kind of plan. As we mentioned, most of us don't have any retirement plan much less retirement goals, but we should.

You can see the entire GoBankingRates.com list of states and retirement information right here. By the way, if you move to Mississippi you'd get an extra 11 months but then you'd just be spending an extra 11 months in Mississippi and nobody wants that.