Out of many things that one starts worrying about right after entering their professional life, retirement stands at the top. It’d be very unnatural to hear someone talk about how they never thought about their retirement once they started earning. For most people, thinking of their retirement is a complex emotion. This is because the thought of having no job in your old age brings both a sense of joy and stress together. This complexity of retirement is what leads people to have a lot of questions and concerns regarding it. One such common concern is that related to a person’s retirement age. Many people want an expert to give them a convincing answer to questions like ‘at what age should I retire?’ and ‘what is the best age to retire?’.
We can bet you want to know the same, don’t you? Well, there is no one-fits-all policy when it comes to defining the best age to retire. However, there are some things, knowing which, you can have a clearer idea regarding what age is suitable to retire.
All You Need to Know About Best Age to Retire
Below, we will be taking you step-by-step on everything there is to know about the best retirement age. So, let us dive in:
Average Best Age To Retire All Over The World
In most countries, it is the government that decides as to what is the best age to retire for all the people working in national organizations. For such regions, it is likely that the private and start-up sectors also go along the working-age limit set by the government. People living in such dictated regions hardly have to worry about deciding on the best age for their retirement since it is already decided for them.
However, most of the developed and developing regions now rarely have any fixed retirement age limit. Yet, there is usually a fixed average retirement age that is often taken as a trend, with most people retiring by their own will around that age.
Several generalizing surveys and studies show that the typical retirement age for most people is anywhere between 60-65 years. A study conducted in America revealed that most people consider 65 as the best age to retire, however, most of the real-life retirements happen when the person retiring is about 60-61 years old.
When you retire at the age of 65, you are more likely to enjoy the maximum out of your social security benefits and can enjoy several other leverages too. However, people have different preferences, and they might want different things from their retirement. This makes the best age for retirement a topic with different answers for everyone.
Factors Defining The Best Age To Retire
While we can’t dictate whether you’d be better with early, normal, or late retirement, we can surely tell you about the major factors that you need to look at when deciding as to when you should be retiring from your job.
If you are concerned about what age is suitable to retire for you, we suggest you look at the following factors and then decide if you need to retire before the average retirement age, after it, or right when most people retire:
1- How Much You Can Save Monthly?
You might have some sort of a retirement plan before you think of the best age to retire. If you don’t have any such thing yet, it is the high time you consult a financial advisor and get yourself a retirement saving account as well as have a proper retirement plan.
Depending on how much you can save monthly, it is easier to see how affluent or shallow your retirement savings accounts would be.
You do not want to live a life while being financially dependent on someone else after you retire. Hence, it is best to have more than enough saved up for your life after retirement. Your current monthly savings can have a huge role in helping you decide your retirement age.
If you are saving more than average, you might want to consider early retirement. However, if your savings are near or below average, let alone early retirement, probably even normal retirement isn’t an option for you.
2- How’d You Lived Your Life After Retirement?
Now, this is something only a fortune teller can tell you accurately. However, you also need to look at your current lifestyle and see how it would change after you retire.
Probably, your kids will no longer be your responsibility by the time you stop working. You might also stop hanging out as much as you do now. However, your medical and other luxuries might impose a burden on your monthly budget in your old age.
Considering all these things help you have a clear idea of your monthly expenses after retirement. This lets you decide whether or not your saved money is enough to sustain you or you need to work more for some years before taking retirement.
3- Your Long-term Assets
For someone who has several real estate units in his or her name, life after retirement sounds fun. You can easily earn from such assets once you retire and hence, you’d never have to look up to your retirement savings to decide whether or not you can retire early.
When trying to set a retirement age limit for yourself, considering your assets, how long they can help you earn, and how much money you can make through them can help you decide better.
4- How Long You’d Live
Now, this is not something you can tell yourself. However, you might want to look at the general life expectancy in your bloodline, your current health status, as well as the average life span of a person living where you do.
While looking at all these things still might not give you a great idea of what to expect in your case, you can still guess your average lifespan. This guess can often lead you to a better decision regarding when you should or should not retire.
5- What Survival Sources You Expect After Retirement?
Even with your social security benefits and an affluent retirement account, you can never be sure if you’d never face any financial issues later in life.
This means, when deciding on your retirement age, you must consider other survival sources that you can rely on in case you are retired and have no money left with you. These sources involve anything that can help your finances.
You can rely on your children, your siblings, your partner’s savings, the jewels, or cars you both have, and any such thing you can think of. Based on whether these assets are enough to help you sustain or not, you can decide if you should retire before the average retirement time or after it.
Early Retirement vs. Late Retirement – Pros and Cons?
Now that you know how to decide on retiring early, late, or right in time, it is the best time to have an idea regarding the pros and cons of each of these retirement ages.
While normal retirement is something you can easily decide on, the other twos are a bit daring to pick from.
Let us suppose you don’t want to go with the normal age of retirement. In this case, the following pros and cons of early and late retirements can help you decide better:
Early Retirement – Pros and Cons
Speaking of the goods of early retirement, retiring early, you still have a lot of energy left to pursue a new degree or begin a startup. You can also become your boss or do that dream job you had to leave in your early 20s because it was not paying well.
If you have been planning to retire early since the day you started your job, you might be way more independent and affluent than others of your age. Also, early retirement for many means a lifetime of adventure and fun.
However, the downside of early retirement are that it puts a lot of pressure on your savings. You must have a lot left in your bank account unless you will run out of money soon. Also, societal pressure is something that everyone retiring early has to deal with badly. Lastly, you can’t enjoy social security benefits and other such advantages when retiring too young.
Late Retirement – Pros and Cons
Retiring late, your chances of staying fit and active for long are increased. Also, for someone who loves their job, retiring late is never a dull choice to make. The late you are to your retirement, the better your chances at social security benefits get.
Best Age To Retire is When You Feel Like It!
On the other hand, late retirement has just one notable con – a lot of work and no time to enjoy your old age years. Other than this, we hardly see anything that might come in one’s way of living a perfect life even when retiring late.
This article is for informational purposes only.
Here are some more great articles that you might enjoy reading.
How to Make Money Last In Retirement?
Why Retirement Planning Is Important?
Thank you for reading. hope you enjoyed our article. Please leave a comment.
