As a financial advisor, when you first meet somebody at a get-together, a party, or whatever it may be, and they find out what you do for work, you get one of two questions: “so do you have any hot stock picks for me? or “how much do I need to retire?” Whether you’re a single person or a couple, the answer is the same: it depends.

The whole goal of retirement planning and saving to your 401(k) or your retirement plan accounts is to replace the income that your job will no longer provide when you walk out that door for the last time. That’s what retirement planning is. To speak to that, the average American household income is $69,000 dollars a year. Now some of you will hear that say that sounds like a lot. Others will hear and say, “how does anybody live on that?” and that speaks to just the differences in income. That’s what retirement planning is, it’s about income replacement. Will you need as much as you made while you were working? Hopefully not with some good planning. Will you need a certain percentage of it? Absolutely. Will that percentage vary between couples and families? Of course it will, because everything does, but the goal is to know what you’ll need when you get to that point when you’re ready to work your last day at the job that you’ve worked at for so long and save so hard in. So that when you leave, your lifestyle and the life that you want to lead doesn’t change.

You’ve planned for it and you’ve saved enough, whatever that amount is, to replace the income that will no longer come from your employer, but it will come from you and your savings and your retirement income plan.