Many economists and policy-makers argue that households do not save enough to maintain an adequate standard of living during retirement. However, there is no consensus on the answer to the underlying question what this standard should be, despite the fact that it is crucial for the design of saving incentives and pension reforms. We address this question with a survey, individually tailored to each respondent's financial situation, conducted both in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Key findings

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... that adequate levels of retirement spending exceed 70 percent of working life spending, and minimum acceptable replacement rates depend strongly on income. to participants at the MESS workshop, at Netspar workshops and seminar participants at Tilburg University and the University of Muenster for astute comments on this paper. Thanks also to Vera Toepoel from CentERdata and to Bas Weerman from RAND for programming our questionnaire and for valuable support, as well as to many other colleagues and friends for valuable feedback on our questionnaire. Financial support from CentER and Netspar is gratefully acknowledged.