Why do people wait so long to retire?

[ponyboy]

It seems like most on this forum could have retired earlier. I know there is always the fear of the unknown...unknown meaning portfolio performance. A lot of members here seems to have a lot stashed away and they're never going to get close to burning through all of their investments. Do you wish you would have left sooner?

 

[Koolau]

In my case, it was primarily because I was enjoying what I was doing - until I didn't.

 

[Lorenzo]

It seems like most on this forum could have retired earlier.

Consider posting this topic as a poll? I know a lot of the more vocal posters here give the impression they could have retired (even) earlier, but are they really representative of retirees (or early retirees) as a whole? Maybe, maybe not. I'm very curious.

 

[silvor]

Because I don’t have enough to keep me busy.

 

[Midpack]

Your question has the unrealistic benefit of hindsight, so not a serious question to me. Most of us retire with 20-40 years of retirement to fund with no more career income - we can’t know how it will play out, and choose to err on the side of measured caution.

It appears we'll have more than we can ever spend, but that doesn't mean I regret not retiring earlier - it was the right decision at the time based on what I knew then. We could have just as easily found our plan closer to failure at this point. No one can predict returns, inflation, geopolitics, tax rates, legislative changes, personal health, longevity or dozens of other unknowns.

 

[Gumby]

It was a condition of my parole that I remain employed.

 

[Koolau]

Yeah, regrets are for "fools" (no offense intended.)

 

[TheWizard]

When I retired in March, 2013, it wasn't clear what the future would bring, as far as investment returns.
Now that it IS clear about those returns, I figure I could have retired two years earlier with no problem.

So I'll do that next time...

 

[flyingaway]

I thought this is an early retirement forum. People here are supposed to retire earlier than the general population.

 

[Sunset]

I liked what I was doing, liked the social interaction, Still took holidays.

Didn't really think about retirement until friends told me they were retiring the next Summer, that made me look and realize I could too.

 

[Purslane]

I thought this is an early retirement forum. People here are supposed to retire earlier than the general population.

If I can retire at 58 instead of 62 or 65, then that is early retirement, Friend.

 

[TheWizard]

I thought this is an early retirement forum. People here are supposed to retire earlier than the general population.

Some do, some don't.
There are no hard rules...

 

[Cassius King]

I think that's just the nature of folks who are mostly wired alike. This is an early retirement forum. You're going to find out that almost all contributors here are planners, savers and seek security. All of that lends itself to saving so much for retirement that almost no black swan event can derail it. The much wanted 100% firecalc response.
Discussion for another thread. But I believe there is an element of "retirement creep" that happens along the way. Just like most avoided "lifestyle creep" along their savings years, I also think there is an element of "retirement creep" that hits most. OMY and I can fly first class when traveling, or buy the car I've always dreamt of. When most of us were younger I'd imagine it was much like the Barenaked Ladies song, "If I had a million dollars". Now through inflation and retirement creep, that is no longer the benchmark.

 

[RetiredHappy]

I get it. I was only 53 and wanted to work until I was 62 and I enjoyed working tremendously. When my husband said he wanted to retire and sell the business, I did the Math (spreadsheet) and knew that we could be retired. My husband never did retirement planning in the sense of cash flow and projections.

I understood where he was coming from as he was 67 and really wanted to be retired 10 years before when we could not afford to be retired. I agreed to sell the business, although I gave myself 1 year to decide whether to go back to work. Six months later I knew I was done as I was enjoying not having migraines when the weekend came around. Every other week or so, I used to start to get migraine by Thursday evening and it wouldn't go away until Monday noon. I would continue to work on the weekends because we had to do weekly payroll and I was responsible to get all the clock in/out cleaned up for shifts up until end of Friday, so that we could run payroll on the weekend, and money would hit the bank on Monday for the employees.

 

[AZsniper]

I could have retired a few years ago. Now, I am on my 3rd "one more year" and I don't regret staying the last few years. I am only 46 and have a long horizon ahead of me. One of my main goals, was for my youngest daughter to graduate HS before I retired, and that is this coming May. I am looking to pull the plug this summer.

 

[MichaelB]

As soon as I saw the great conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn I knew it was the right moment. I confirmed with my horoscope and got a tarot card reading just to be safe.

 

[aja8888]

As soon as my kids and grandkids moved out for the third time, I knew I was golden!

 

[Chuckanut]

I waited until 62 because I needed affordable health insurance. Bad health bills were the biggest threat to a successful long term retirement. The day I found out I could get that covered, it took me maybe 5 minutes to decided I was giving notice. I worked one more school year (which I had already agreed to do) and bailed.

It’s later than you think.

 

[Pointby2]

It seems like most on this forum could have retired earlier.

While that may be true, it seems to me there is also a large percentage of people, NOT on this forum that could have retired earlier, but didn't because they lacked the financial knowledge and just decided to retire at 65, since that's the age people retire at.

 

[Gallaher]

I guess I don’t wish that I retired sooner. However, I could have and if I could do again I would have retired sooner . Yes sounds kind of wimpy.
My issue was finances. I retired when I hit the sweet spot 57. Subsequent returns were much stronger than I expected.
How could I have guessed that?

 

[ponyboy]

While that may be true, it seems to me there is also a large percentage of people, NOT on this forum that could have retired earlier, but didn't because they lacked the financial knowledge and just decided to retire at 65, since that's the age people retire at.

You hit the nail on the head. My in laws could have retired a LOT sooner than they did, but, they're financial scammer told them if they wanted to maintain their lifestyle, they would need to work until 65. It was complete horse S. My parents have that mentality to. No one can retire until 65. It's frustrating.

I'm a little concerned that we may work too long or save too much. We don't deprive ourselves of things and do what we want. And if there is a bunch left over it'll go to our child, assuming he is responsible with money and no a druggie. If so, it'll all go to organizations of our choice.

I guess there's a fine line of overly cautious and not cautious enough. Those lines can get blurred and keep people from retiring.

 

[Dtail]

If I had my current knowledge at a much younger age, plus discovering this forum, I would have retired perhaps around 52/53 instead of 57.
As for another reason generically on this site, many folks who have achieved FIRE here, did so by incorporating a LBYM lifestyle. Thus they tend to be conservative financially and one only has one shot typically to get retirement correct from a financial perspective.

 

[Alan]

For me it was retiree healthcare. By hanging on until I was 55 got me my “80 points” - Age + years of service, otherwise I would have retired 2 years earlier

 

[Focus]

Each individual has so many factors to consider. Who am I to second guess their timing?

 

[disneysteve]

I know there is always the fear of the unknown

I think you answered your own question.

Do you wish you would have left sooner?

Not really but I had the benefit of an extremely flexible job. I was able to cut back from full time (36 hrs) to part time (20 hrs) to per diem (minimum of 24 hrs every 3 months) so I could ease into retirement and test out the budget and make sure we were fine (even though every indication was saying we were) before stopping entirely. For all of 2023 I averaged 6.7 hrs/wk so I was all but retired and between 1/1/24 and 6/8/24, my official last day, I worked a total of 46 hours. So yes, I could have retired in late 2022 and we would have been just fine but I hung around until mid 2024. I'm not sorry about that though. I liked what I was doing and loved the people I worked with.