By e-mail this week: “As a regular reader of your column, I frequently read your admonition to get rich slowly, to acquire wealth etc.

“What is rich? When is enough, enough? At what level of wealth can I retire comfortably? I know this is like asking the length of a piece of string (twice the distance from the middle to the end).

“I’m mid-70s, with a wife who, like me, enjoys the good things in life. Will a million do it (not counting the house)? If not, will 2 or 3 million? With only a modicum of a pension my goal is to expire simultaneously with our investments.” So: when is enough, enough? This question would have been easy to answer if the reader had defined “the good things in life”.

Obviously, there is no right answer. But I will start here: most people in their mid-70s could get by nicely, thank you, on a house that’s bought and paid for, and a million dollars. They’d do better with $2 million, and better still with three.

A million bucks should enable you, broadly, to spend $50,000 a year and feed the kitty a little to prolong the bitter end. Major financial setbacks (to do with the house, health, etc.) would reduce the capital. I do not know this reader personally, but I do know Bermuda. The reader has to ask himself what he and his wife spent last year, add a little, and divide the answer by $50 grand. The result, in millions of dollars, is one guesstimate of how many millions he needs. This assumes more variables than I could begin to list, the key one being that he and his wife live at the same economic pace next year as they did this year.

Other variables include: Does the reader have health and other suitable insurance coverage? How big a financial cushion would enable him to sleep at night? Does he have children who could help? Is his million wisely invested? Will inflation and the dollar behave over the balance of his life? And, of course, the length of a piece of string.

If he can’t get by on a house and a million, he shouldn’t sweat it. Just cut back on some of the good things in life until he can make ends meet. And then remember that as he ages, the million will shrink as he does; simultaneous expiry is indeed the perfect goal, but he has to beware the chance of outliving his nest egg without a safety net to fall back on, such as a child or a workable extortion racket.

Strictly speaking, you have a choice: cut expenses to reach the balancing point, or increase the capital. In this particular case, some other options apply. If the house is bought and paid for, the reader could move to a smaller one, perhaps in a cheaper country, as the years progress, and reinvest the difference. (Every time I write that, the hate mail floods in. The fact is, however, that Bermuda is the best place in the world to live with an income, but less welcoming to those on fixed incomes. Pound for pound, Bermuda houses are significantly more valuable than their counterparts elsewhere. Hate away.)

What is rich? Financial planners, of whom I am not one, can answer this question more efficiently and in greater detail than I can. If my reader is worried, a visit to a CFA or some equally-qualified guru should provide reassurance But he should be prepared for a shock. One CFA I know now uses 100 as people’s life expectancy. If the reader lives to be 100 and insists on the good things all the way, my guess would be that a million wouldn’t do it.

In true financial shrink mode, I would ask: “How much do you think you should have socked away?” This would force my reader, who is obviously financially savvy, to invest some thought in coming up with the answer. Its organic nature, springing from the very source, is of a higher practical use than someone in a suit, saying: “Your spending limit is $300 a week.” The eyes of many a reader glaze over at this point. The call for effort on the investor’s part often raises issues of motivation, a fear of facing the truth (Struthonianism, my great contribution to economic theory), and the whole “I can’t be bothered” school of thought.

Be bothered. Do what I am counselling my reader to do. Work out how much you spend in a year, bring the figure up to where you’d like it to be, to let you do what you’d like to do, and multiply it by 20. The answer, in dollars, is how much you should consider as a minimum retirement portfolio, not counting your house.

Please note that this is not financial advice, just a rule of thumb. You can’t sue me if you follow my every word, and become penniless at the age of 24 or 118. That will be what the law refers to as “your bad luck”. But the exercise is worth doing anyway. If you learn nothing at all, you will at least have a better understanding of your standing. Whether you choose to shoot for it, or prefer to view the whole thing as Mission Impossible and use that as a crutch to justify not being bothered, is up to you.

Finally, on the matter of expiring simultaneously with one’s nest egg, there is a simple, guaranteed, five-step programme for achieving this:

1. Watch your fortune dwindle.

2. When all you have left in the world is $1,552, buy two one-way air tickets to San Francisco for yourself and a loved one. These will cost $1,500.

3. At San Francisco, take a taxi to the Golden Gate Bridge. $50.

4. Pay a dollar each to walk across the bridge.

5. At the half-way point, jump off the bridge.crombie[AT]northrock.bm