A Delayed Retirement Is a Healthy Retirement?
Deciding when to retire sounds like a simple calculation, but there are many unseen factors. For example, you might count backwards from the average life expectancy to your anticipated age at retirement and think you have arrived at the number of years you could enjoy. By this logic, the sooner you retire, the more years of retirement fun you get. The trouble with this line of thinking is that health and money are limited resources. A recent Tik Tok video by Neal Shah, a gerontologist who posts content about aging and elder care, highlights some grim statistics about early retirement. If you venture to certain corners of the Internet, you can get the idea that all you have to do is live frugally and win the entrepreneurship game, and then you can retire in your 50s and spend decades doing exactly as you choose. The studies that Shah cites portray a less rosy reality for early retirees. Not only do they lag behind seniors who retire later in terms of disposable income, but they also trail them in longevity. If you are ready to be honest with yourself about how much health and money you have and make a retirement plan that suits your circumstances, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.
Retiring Early Does Not Always Mean Enjoying Many Years of Retirement
Shah’s video about early retirees shows that people who retire before age 65 are more likely to die less than a decade after their last day of work than those who retire later. In other words, a longer time in the workforce is correlated with a longer retirement. He observed an especially sharp spike in early deaths among people who retire at age 62, the youngest age at which one can begin drawing retirement benefits. Shah points to several elements of the work environment that help seniors stay healthy, such as a structured schedule of activities, frequent social interaction, physical activity, and the mental activity inherent in responding to intellectually challenging tasks.
There could also be another reason for the improved longevity outcomes of people who retire later, besides the reasons that Shah cites. Specifically, it could be that people who retire later do so because they are in better health than early retirees. In fact, health is the biggest predictor of retirement age. Most people retire earlier than they originally planned because of health problems, falling back on Social Security and the retirement savings, if any, that they have managed to accumulate. This is probably what accounts for so many people who retired as soon as they became eligible for Social Security and then collapsed at the finish line. If you are young and healthy, buy long-term care insurance and stay in the workforce as long as your old bones will allow it.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney
An estate planning lawyer can help you plan for long-term care expenses so that they will not break you financially if you must retire earlier than you had hoped. Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.
Source:
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