Yahoo finance has a post on the same topic:
10-reasons-you-shouldnt-retire: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance
Only items #1 (health) and #6 (social life) are of potential concern to me. Given awareness of the issues, I'm hoping that I will have no problems addressing them when the time comes.
4 years, 15 days to go. Sigh......
LOL that list in the Yahoo article told me more reasons for retiring early than for not retiring early. Specifically,
(1) Health - NOT being around sick coworkers and sick people on the trains has made me less likely to get sick.
(2) Marriage - I am single so that one means nothing to me. In fact, not working enables me to spend more time with my ladyfriend.
(3) Delay taxes - Are you kidding? My tax bill is vastly reduced since I stopped working. No FICA taxes, nearly no income taxes.
(4) High SS checks - Okay, my SS will be lower by not working more years. But, the SS benefit formula repays only 15 cents of the wage dollar in the highest bracket (i.e. bend point). So the benefit reduction will not be a whole lot.
(5) Work adds meaning to your life - I like telling people about my volunteer work and my hobbies more than I liked telling about my work. My (former) work was difficult and time-consuming to explain and usually went over the head of the listener.
(6) Your social life - I just about never attended events with my coworkers. I had one or two friends I would talk to or have lunch with sometimes. But I did not want to do other stuff with them, as I had nothing in common with them. I just wanted to get away from them at the end of the day. Being retired so I have more time to do my volunteer work and hobbies (and time with the ladyfriend) has improved my social life.
(7) Health Insurance - In my last 17 months of working, I reduced my weekly work hours from 20 to 12, making me ineligible for group health. So even if I kept working, I'd have to still pay for my own HI. I protested their policy vehemently, offering to pay 100% of the premiums. No dice. It was a secondary reason I retired.
(8) Society needs your skills - I did that in my last few years of working. In my volunteer work, I am passing on my skills, too. Just different skills.
(9) Job perks - When I switched to 12 hours per week, I lost nearly all of my remaining perks. Only the company stock (ESOP) remained, and it tanked at the end of 2008 and into 2009. So retiring in 2008 before it tanked was a way to preserve my remaining perk (and fund my retirement income).
(10) Haven't saved enough - No problem for me, as I had about $300k of my own plus $300k from the ESOP and another $235k in the 401(k) rolled into an IRA. Take the money and run, shielding it as much as possible from taxes, and retire.