This Is the Retirement Regret Nobody Talks About - Time article (pensions, spouses)
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Recent sad news about serious illnesses of a dear friend and spouses of several friends made me realized how lucky we were in enjoying our retirement together in good health.
The thread "How much do you REALLY need" raised a number of questions in my mind such as "Should finance be the most important or only factor in retirement decision?", "What criteria does one set to decide when to retire?", "How many retirees regret not retiring earlier?". "Why and what make one regret not retiring early? "etc.
I found this article which answer one of my questions
A new survey of retirees between the ages of 62 and 70 with $100,000 or more in investable assets conducted on behalf of New York Life found that nearly half of respondents wished they had retired earlier. More than half who were 60 or older when they retired regretted waiting so long.
On average, respondents wished they’d retired a full four years earlier than they actually did.
I think the bolded statement is even sadder when it comes to the health and life of your beloved.
Quote:
Then as they age, it dawns on them that they were wasting the potentially best years of their retirement in the office. “They realize that having flexibility during those earliest potential retirement years can be priceless,” he says.
It’s a classic case of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone
With all the vamping and hyperbole, it's difficult to figure out what the big "IT" in the article and OP really is?
On the second reading, I concluded "IT" was: “Most people spend a lifetime accumulating retirement assets but don’t know how to turn those assets into a fulfilling retirement.”
This is still pretty nebulous and offers no solutions or avoidance techniques. My impression is that someone had to fill so many inches of column with something - and simply wrote until they had enough words to fill the space.
Would you rather be less well off at 65 and still be able to do pretty much what you used to do at 50 or a bit richer and not be able to get around as well? No one knows how long their health will hold out. Roll the dice.
I opted to retire from full time at 64. No perfect decision. IF you have enough money to retire very early I think you should do it.
When I see friends Ive known since kindergarten still working at jobs they have had since their 20s....we are now 62...I can't relate. I retired early, live in the glorious Blue Ridge mountains, live a very simple life and they are commuting by train from suburbs to NYC every day for work and paying over $20, 000 a year on taxes alone....OMG it bewilders me!!!!! I am sure I will never regret early retirement....imo there is so much more to life than work!!!!!
Well, yeah, most everybody wishes they could retire as early as possible. From the OP, it looks like maybe people didn't realize that their health could slide so badly, and/or so quickly, once in their 60's When looking back, realized that there was a significant difference, health-wise, between what they could do in the early 60s as opposed to the late 60s. Yep, it si easy to have regrets in hindsight!
Sure there are enormous personal benefits to retiring as soon as you can IF YOU CAN. But there are also enormous changes in your life that take place at retirement---that depend on who you were when you were working.
I retired at age 62, the earliest I could afford it. I moved far away to a property that I purchased at the tail end of my working life, and that when I retired I owned free and clear. Due to the good luck of pensions that were untouchable by idiot governments and planning and with the benefit of some inheritances, I am not in debt in retirement at all. So far I have fairly good health, and continued appropriate planning makes that continue(except that good health as a Senior is really just the slowest possible way to die).
But there are issues that those who only have to figure out the financial ones never see.
If you had a job of some or a lot of responsibility, then you no longer have that. No one cares what you think, no one comes to you for assistance, no one want you to help on projects that are important to people. Sure you can volunteer, but management doesn't treat volunteers like they are particularly important to evolution of the organization. And the older you get the more difficult that is. Even young people in stores where you go to purchase items begin to treat you as if you have cognitive dysfunction or are a small child.
If you had a job where it was important to you to help other people in their lives, and where to do that job you had lots of credentials that were required, in your new environment you may find that your ability to assist people at the same high level that you did in your previous life is now gone. And if helping other people is very very important to you, you may find that doing this in anything other than a menial no-responsibility way is very difficult.
If neither of these things happened to you, then you may enjoy the anonymity of life in retirement.
For some people, you knew this would happen, but you never expected it to be as intense as it is. And so you find yourself posting on forums like this one to try to share your knowledge, but just like in regular life, people pooh-pooh you, or don't believe you, or being younger, or being people who's job never required them to be a professional helper of others, people tell you that you need to get on medication.
It is an intense change and psychological issue that has almost never been discusses anywhere.
I'm over 70, and still working. Not because I have to but because work gives me purpose and identity. I could never see myself retiring when I was in my early 60s as the mental change and conflict that it would have brought would have killed me before I reached 70. It's different for everyone, and I would never say my philosophy was applicable to all. I am grateful every day that I have work coming my way, and more importantly that I have the physical and mental ability to do it!
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