Most Retirees Stop Working Sooner Than Planned
A growing number of retirement savers assume they'll be able to make up for lost time by simply working longer. Most workers surveyed by the Employee Benefit Research Institute say they plan to retire at age 65 or older. And 7 percent say they never plan to retire.
Yet a Fidelity Research Institute study shows that for a majority of workers, this may be wishful thinking: 55 percent of retirees actually left the workforce sooner than expected. The typical worker ended up retiring one to five years before he or she planned.
Why? Something unexpected often arose. Two out of five workers cited health reasons for their sooner-than-expected retirement. And 5 percent more said they were forced to leave their jobs to care for a loved one.
Beyond health reasons, 12 percent of workers simply realized later in life that they no longer wanted to work full time. The moral of the story: "Expectations of working longer to bridge any gap in savings may not be realistic," says Guy Patton of the Fidelity Research Institute.
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