[ryandrake]

Sorry about your friend. My wife also had a friend in the same boat. Made it to 59 and heart attack. Statistically they are outliers, though. For every one of those cases there are probably 10 that make it long past a normal retirement age and 2 that make it beyond 90 years or so. Given the choice, I’d rather be prepared for a 30 year retirement and unluckily die early than be prepared for a 5 year retirement and live to see 90, eating dog food.

[VBprogrammer]

You can live a long time with a very low quality of life. It's not just dying that the concern. I don't think we're really talking here about not having enough money to survive in retirement, we're saving to have the dream retirement later.

[rootusrootus]

Right, I wouldn't advocate spending it all. Just a bit of moderation. It does help that by the time you're within 10 or 15 years of retirement you should mostly not need big contributions to investments, the interest ought to be doing the heavy lifting. Doesn't always work out that way of course.