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In my opinion, official retirement is when you are no longer working. If you decide to work as a hobby, etc. after collecting social security, any social security or medicare payments you pay out from your salary will not count towards your retirement amount from SS. It all goes into a "general" fund. Whatever the amount of SS you get when you begin collecting is what you get for a lifetime.
This seems to infer that "retiring" means you are collecting Social Security. I retired from my career after 37 years and collect a pension, so I consider myself retired and so does the public transportation agency for whom I worked. I can't collect Social Security for another six years, however, so the money I make working here and there part-time will go toward my Social Security.
I worked four days this month and am scheduled to work three in December. Have a few days scheduled in January, too. Part-time work brings in an additional $500 or so a month and barely impedes on my time, so yes, I still say I am retired. The real job meant ten-hour days and checking and responding to email seven days a week, so this sure as heck feels like retirement to me.
Semantics. Some people will claim that if you lift a finger that is not retirement. Others will say retirement is doing whatever you want and enjoy, even if that ends up getting you compensated. Still others will say that retirement is when you are free from commitments, so if you have a regular volunteering gig or babysitting grandkids, that's not retirement.
1 and 3 NOT retired, 2 retired. If you're working for pay, you're not retired. Casually working or part time, or whatever, if you're getting paid you're not retired.
I read in the linked article that the average age of retirement is 63. I find that interesting but I could not find out a true definition of being retired. How do they get the statistic of 63?
1) Left a full-time High School teaching job last year but now work as a part-time substitute and tutor and average 25 hours a week working for pay.
2) Left full-time work but now volunteer up to 40 hours a week for the United Way at no pay.
3) Left corporate America but work as a consultant and work 60 hours a week some months and other months not at all.
Are any of my friends above officially retired for statistical purposes?
I think "retired" is a subjective term that is in the eye of the beholder. I know of some people who had their own businesses, and gradually just worked less, and traveled and golfed more.
They never called themselves "retired".
Retirement is what you make it. I worked part-time for the first seven years of retirement and enjoyed it more than the last couple years of my career. I did it for a variety of reasons but would have been fine not to. Being able to choose is the nicest part of retirement in some ways.
OP you're 'officially' retired when you start drawing SS full time at 65 and sign up for Medicare. You can still work earning up to $15,000 without effecting your SS status. Over that you're then called a part time worker or semi-retired that is drawing SS, then you're SS goes down a certain dollar amount that you earned.
See, to me "semi-retired" is still doing the job you've been doing, but scaling it back. You haven't yet officially retired and come back; you're just easing into retirement by going part- versus full-time.
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