When it comes to lifetime financial planning, one easy starting point is to estimate your lifespan.
After that is done, a good place to start is estimating how much food you might need for the rest of your lifespan.
I like to look at it in terms of food rather than dollars because it is impossible to predict future levels of inflation.
If an economic meltdown were to happen, I would assume that people would have to buy the cheapest food possible in order to stay alive.
Even though it may not be the cheapest, the food that immediately comes to mind is ramen noodles. Last I checked, one package costs 18 cents at walmart.
Making the assumption that a man would need to eat 3 packages of ramen noodles to keep from going hungry in a day, you can simply multiply the estimated days you have left to live by 3 and multiply that amount by 18 cents.
In my case, I expect to live another 62 years so I have an estimated 22,630 days left to live.
Under the worst possible conditions, I would need 67,890 packages of ramen to feed me until my death.
The cost of that amount of ramen noodles in today's dollars equal $12,220.20 (not including taxes).
Where I live, taxes on groceries is 2%. So taxes included, the lifetime supply of noodles comes out to be $12,464.60.
Theoretically, $12,500 can buy a lifetime supply of food for a man in his 20's today. However, eating nothing but ramen noodles for life would significantly shorten a man's lifespan so the lifetime supply of noodles may be a lower amount.
I do not actually recommend buying a lifetime supply of ramen noodles for health concerns and the fact that even noodles have a limited shelf life.
This is just a good starting point to determine how much money you will need in a lifetime.
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