HOw much do I need to retire? YIKES!

Days to retirment: 2940

I did a quick spreadsheet that allowed me to work out what I should need in the way of savings.  I know that the financial planners have these massive spreadshets that allow you to do what-if analysis with compounded interest and other fancy featurs, but I just did it with straight calculations.  Interest and dividends are just icing on the cake for this basic analysis.

My salary (using my take-home pay) is about 60 grand. To have the same income for 20 years after I retire, I'd need something like 1.2 million. Gotta win a lottery to have that much put aside....

Fortunately, I've got a company pension plus the Canadian Pension Plan and Old Age Security (big assumption is that they will still be around in the future).   That covers about 32 thousand a year, leaving me to fund the shortfall with my savings.  Crunching the numbers for 20 years, this results in 550 thousand.

OK, sounds of screeching tires .....  Of course, I'll have no mortgage by that time (20 grand a year at current rates), so that pulls down the numbers a lot more, leaving a shortfall of 7 grand and a need for having $140 grand in savings.

Obtainable but really a plain vanilla life. Assuming that one mortgage payment a month gets used for other activities and emergency savings, this adds an additional 10 grand to my shortfall, needing a total savings of 330 grand.

What have I actually saved?  Based on current savings plus continuing putting month into my Employee Share Ownership Plan at the current rate, and not factoring in dividends, stock splits or the vagaries of the market (remember 2009 and 2010?), I'll have a total saving around 140 grand, enough to finance the vanilla retirement.

So, the differenece between the vanilla and upgraded retirement means that I have to find another 190 grand in savings somewhere. Works out to about 2 grand a month.

Immediate Goals:
increase RRSP contributions on pre-tax dollars if possible
funnel all bonuses and tax refunds into RRSP

This is the starting point -- I know what I need to put away (sticker shock city).