This piece was written about a year ago, but the two statistics from Sloan should be read again. During the past year, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence to support their findings:
There are a lot of options and factors to consider when preparing for retirement. It’s no longer just about the size of your nest egg. It’s about adequate insurance coverage, strategies to maximize your social security benefits (interesting story here), strategies to minimize taxes, and weighing your needs for Long Term Care insurance. And that’s just to name a few.
Of course, another option to consider is when to retire. Given the state of the economy and the fact that people are healthier and living longer than ever before, more and more people are pushing retirement back. Here are a few interesting statistics coming from the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College:
“Fewer Older Workers Expect to Retire at 62 or 65. According to a 2012 analysis of data from the Health and Retirement Survey, ‘a declining percentage of Americans are expecting to retire at 62 and 65. In 2006, 7.4 percent of people [over the age of 50] said they plan to stop working at 62, but by 2010 it had dropped to 4.9 percent. In 2006, 16.1 percent people expected to retire at 65, but in 2010, 14.6 percent planned to do so. Conversely, expected retirement at 66 has increased from 2.9 percent in 2006 to 4 percent in 2010.'”
And coming from the same outfit:
“One-fifth of U.S. Workers Say They Don’t Plan to Stop Working According to the 2011 Sun-Life Unretirement Index, when asked at what age they plan to stop working, 20% of American workers stated ‘Never. I think I’ll always work in some capacity.'”