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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
The career path I'm on will never allow me to earn much. Will I ever 
have enough for retirement? 
 
Answer: 
 
I received a call from my 30-year-old, not long ago—he’s been married 
about three or four years, and he’s a teacher, and his wife is a 
teacher—and his question to me was, “Dad, Ann and I are just 
teachers, and we’re just never going to have enough, probably, to 
ever retire.”  
 
So, I said, “Tim, tell me a little about your financial situation.” And 
what he said to me was that they have never, ever used credit card 
debt, they didn’t have any car loans, and had a home mortgage. They 
had a savings account—their savings account was some ten, twenty, 
thirty thousand—I don’t remember the exact amount.  
 
The reason that they had a savings account I think was significant, 
and that is that when they both worked they saved one of the salaries. 
So, they wanted to save one of the salaries prior to having children, 
and so they had some money in savings. Quite frankly, for a thirty-
year-old couple, they were in phenomenal financial shape. 
 
And then he shared with me that they were contributing to their 
403(b) plan, the maximum amount. That was another four or five 
thousand dollars per year. So, they were not spending everything that 
was coming in and they were saving for the future.  
 
 
 
And I said to him, “Tim, do you realize that if you continue to save a 
thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand dollars a year, what 
that’s going to grow to over the next thirty-five or forty years, when 
you plan on retiring?” 
 
I said, “My guess is that it will grow to at least a million dollars.”  
And when I looked at the compounding charts I realized that just 
saving a thousand dollars a year out of his salary, or out of their 
salary, and putting it towards retirement, he was going to have 
enough to retire on. And the reason for that was that he had chosen a 
lifestyle that was relatively small compared to what the world said that 
he could have afforded.  
 
My wife’s aunt, her Aunt Abbess, died—an old-maid aunt, if you will— 
and she never married, and when she died, she left a considerable 
amount of money. She had stayed in one home over her whole 
working life. She never even owned a car, because she could walk to 
work. The reason she had enough for retirement is that she hadn’t 
spent it on consumptive items early on. So, whether or not you have 
enough for retirement is really not a function of your income as much 
as it a function of your expenses. 
 
If you can live within your income, and if you can avoid spending 
today consumptively, then you are going to have, probably, enough 
for retirement. I’m just going to encourage you to start with a 
spending plan that keeps your spending less than your income. 
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