How much do you need to save for retirement?

How much money will you need in order to retire?Well, that all depends on what kind of retirement you want.

One hundred thousand dollars per year? That would do nicely, wouldn’t it? If you could retire with an annual after-tax income of about $100,000, life would be pretty sweet. As long as you didn’t insist on bunking down in a high-end town like Beverly Hills or Palm Beach, you could afford to do all the things we associate with the golden years: some travel, the arts, some charitable work, quality time with the grandkids.

John and Lee Jones retired seven years ago in Naples, Florida, with almost $100,000 in annual income and they are loving it. They go to the Philharmonic, play golf, and have just leased a new convertible. “This is a better lifestyle than what we had imagined,” says Lee. “I never thought we’d move to Florida. Our lifestyle is relaxed, but still a little elegant.”

Fair enough. But let’s just say—for the sake of argument—that you wanted to aim higher than $100,000. That you weren’t going to be satisfied with a merely comfortable retirement. That you wanted to retire rich—like John and Dolores James of Winter Park, Florida, with an annual income that’s almost double that of the Jones family. With some $200,000 in annual retirement income, the Jameses don’t stay home much now that they’re retired. They’re crisscrossing the globe, doing everything they didn’t have time to do while they were working. “So far, we’ve been to Europe, Australia, and 31 Patagonia,” John says. “I went fly-fishing in Alaska and South America. Dolores and I are really having a fun time.”

No question, it takes a lot of dough to spin off that kind of income. By our estimates, a 65-year-old retiree should have $1.6 million in savings right now to count on $100,000 a year in spending money for the rest of his life. (We’re assuming he—or she—would live to 90 and receive Social Security, inflation would average 3 percent a year over the rest of his life, he would average a 10 percent annual return on his investments, and he would spend his nest egg by his death.) A retiree who wants to live on $200,000 a year would need $4.7 million in today’s dollars.

Think those numbers are out of your reach? Don’t be so sure. If you’ve been taking advantage of the more aggressive choices offered by your 401(k) or other retirement plans, you probably have a decent head start. But even if you’ve put off saving until now, you can still get there.