Retirement

For other uses, see Retirement (disambiguation).

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.

An increasing number of individuals are choosing to put off this point of total retirement, by selecting to exist in the emerging state of Pre-tirement.

Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions no longer allow the person to work any longer (by illness or accident) or as a result of legislation concerning their position. In most countries, the idea of retirement is of recent origin, being introduced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Previously, low life expectancy and the absence of pension arrangements meant that most workers continued to work until death. Germany was the first country to introduce retirement, in 1889.

Nowadays most developed countries have systems to provide pensions on retirement in old age, which may be sponsored by employers and/or the state. In many poorer countries, support for the old is still mainly provided through the family. Today, retirement with a pension is considered a right of the worker in many societies, and hard ideological, social, cultural and political battles have been fought over whether this is a right. In many western countries this right is mentioned in national constitutions.

Retirement in specific countries

Main article: Retirement age

A person may retire at whatever age they please. However, a country's tax laws and/or state old-age pension rules usually mean that in a given country a certain age is thought of as the "standard" retirement age.

The "standard" retirement age varies from country to country but it is generally between 50 and 70 (according to latest statistics, 2011). In some countries this age is different for males and females, although this has recently been challenged in some countries (e.g., Austria), and in some countries the ages are being brought into line. The table below shows the variation in eligibility ages for public old-age benefits in the United States and many European countries, according to the OECD.

Country	Early retirement age	Normal retirement age	Employed, 55–59	Employed, 60–64	Employed, 65–69	Employed, 70+
Austria	60 (57)	65 (60)	39%	7%	1%	0%
Belgium	60	65	45%	12%	1%	0%
Cambodia	50	55	16%	1%	0%	0%
Denmark	none	65	77%	35%	9%	3%
France	62*	65*	51%	12%	1%	0%
Germany	65	67	61%	23%	3%	0%
Greece	58	67	65%	18%	4%	0%
Italy	57	67	26%	12%	1%	0%
Netherlands	60	65 (67)	53%	22%	3%	0%
Norway	62	67	74%	33%	7%	1%
Spain	60**	65**	46%	22%	0%	0%
Sweden	61	65	78%	58%	5%	1%
Switzerland	63 (61), [58]	65 (64)	77%	46%	7%	2%
Thailand	50	60	?	?	?	?
United Kingdom	65	68	69%	40%	10%	2%
United States	62	67	66%	43%	20%	5%

Notes: Parentheses indicate eligibility age for women when different. Sources: Cols. 1–2: OECD Pensions at a Glance (2005), Cols. 3–6: Tabulations from HRS, ELSA and SHARE. Square brackets indicate early retirement for some public employees.

* In France, the retirement age has been extended to 62 and 67 respectively, over the next eight years.

** In Spain, the retirement age will be extended to 63 and 67 respectively, this increase will be progressively done from 2013 to 2027 at a rate of 1 month during the first 6 years and 2 months during the other 9.

In the United States, while the normal retirement age for Social Security, or Old Age Survivors Insurance (OASI), historically has been age 65 to receive unreduced benefits, it is gradually increasing to age 67. For those turning 65 in 2008, full benefits will be payable beginning at age 66. Public servants are often not covered by Social Security but have their own pension programs. Police officers in the United States are typically allowed to retire at half pay after only 20 years of service or three-quarter pay after 30 years, allowing people to retire in their early forties or fifties. Military members of the US Armed Forces may elect to retire after 20 years of active duty. Their retirement pay (not a pension since they can be involuntarily called back to active duty at any time) is calculated on total number of years on active duty, their final pay grade and the retirement system in place when they entered service. Allowances such as housing and subsistence are not used to calculate a member's retired pay. Members awarded the Medal of Honor qualify for a separate stipend, regardless of the years of service. Military members in the reserve and US National Guard have their retirement based on a point system.

Data sets

Recent advances in data collection have vastly improved our ability to understand important relationships between retirement and factors such as health, wealth, employment characteristics and family dynamics, among others. The most prominent study for examining retirement behavior in the United States is the ongoing Health and Retirement Study (HRS), first fielded in 1992. The HRS is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of adults in the U.S. ages 51+, conducted every two years, and contains a wealth of information on such topics as labor force participation (e.g., current employment, job history, retirement plans, industry/occupation, pensions, disability), health (e.g., health status and history, health and life insurance, cognition), financial variables (e.g., assets and income, housing, net worth, wills, consumption and savings), family characteristics (e.g., family structure, transfers, parent/child/grandchild/sibling information) and a host of other topics (e.g., expectations, expenses, internet use, risk taking, psychosocial, time use).

2002 and 2004 saw the introductions of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which includes respondents from 14 continental European countries plus Israel. These surveys were closely modeled after the HRS in sample frame, design and content. A number of other countries (e.g., Japan, South Korea) also now field HRS-like surveys, and others (e.g., China, India) are currently fielding pilot studies. These data sets have expanded the ability of researchers to examine questions about retirement behavior by adding a cross-national perspective.

Study	First wave	Eligibility age	Representative year/last wave	Sample size: households	Sample size: individuals
Health and Retirement Study (HRS)	1992	51+	2006	12,288	18,469
Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS)	2001	50+	2003	8,614	13,497
English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)	2002	50+	2006	6,484	9,718
Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)	2004	50+	2006	22,255	32,442
Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA)	2006	45+	2006	6,171	10,254
Japanese Health and Retirement Study (JHRS)	2007	45-75	2007		Est. 10,000
WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE)	2007	50+/18-49	2007	Est. 5,000/1,000
Chinese Health and Retirement Study (CHARLS)	pilot 2008	45+	2008	Est. 1,500	Est. 2,700
Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI)	pilot 2009	45+	2009		Est. 2,000

Notes: MHAS discontinued in 2003; ELSA numbers exclude institutionalized (nursing homes). Source: Borsch-Supan et al., eds. (November 2008). Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (2004–2007): Starting the Longitudinal Dimension.

Factors affecting retirement decisions

Many factors affect people's retirement decisions. Social Security clearly plays an important role. In countries around the world, people are much more likely to retire at the early and normal retirement ages of the public pension system (e.g., ages 62 and 65 in the U.S.). This pattern cannot be explained by different financial incentives to retire at these ages since typically retirement benefits at these ages are approximately actuarially fair; that is, the present value of lifetime pension benefits (pension wealth) conditional on retiring at age a is approximately the same as pension wealth conditional on retiring one year later at age a+1. Nevertheless, a large literature has found that individuals respond significantly to financial incentives relating to retirement (e.g., to discontinuities stemming from the Social Security earnings test or the tax system).

Greater wealth tends to lead to earlier retirement, since wealthier individuals can essentially "purchase" additional leisure. Generally the effect of wealth on retirement is difficult to estimate empirically since observing greater wealth at older ages may be the result of increased saving over the working life in anticipation of earlier retirement. However, a number of economists have found creative ways to estimate wealth effects on retirement and typically find that they are small. For example, one paper exploits the receipt of an inheritance to measure the effect of wealth shocks on retirement using data from the HRS. The authors find that receiving an inheritance increases the probability of retiring earlier than expected by 4.4 percentage points, or 12 percent relative to the baseline retirement rate, over an eight-year period.

A great deal of attention has surrounded how the financial crisis (2007 - ?) is affecting retirement decisions, with the conventional wisdom saying that fewer people will retire since their savings have been depleted; however recent research suggests that the opposite may happen. Using data from the HRS, researchers examined trends in defined benefit (DB) vs. defined contribution (DC) pension plans and found that those nearing retirement had only limited exposure to the recent stock market decline and thus are not likely to substantially delay their retirement. At the same time, using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), another study estimates that mass layoffs are likely to lead to an increase in retirement almost 50% larger than the decrease brought about by the stock market crash, so that on net retirements are likely to increase in response to the crisis.

More information tells of how many who retire will continue to work, but not in the career they have had for the majority of their life. Job openings will increase in the next 5 years due to retirements of the baby boomer generation. The Over 50 population is actually the fastest growing labor groups in the US.

A great deal of research has examined the effects of health status and health shocks on retirement. It is widely found that individuals in poor health generally retire earlier than those in better health. This does not necessarily imply that poor health status leads people to retire earlier, since in surveys retirees may be more likely to exaggerate their poor health status to justify their earlier decision to retire. This justification bias, however, is likely to be small. In general, declining health over time, as well as the onset of new health conditions, have been found to be positively related to earlier retirement. Health conditions that can cause someone to retire include hypertension, diabetes mellitus, sleep apnea, joint diseases, and hyperlipidemia.

Most people are married when they reach retirement age; thus, spouse's employment status may affect one's decision to retire. On average, husbands are three years older than their wives in the U.S., and spouses often coordinate their retirement decisions. Thus, men are more likely to retire if their wives are also retired than if they are still in the labor force, and vice versa.

EU Member States

Researchers analyzed factors affecting retirement decisions in EU Member States:

• Rashad Mehbaliyev (2011) analyzed how different factors related with health, demographics, behavior, financial status, and macroeconomics can affect retirement status in European Union countries for data collected from the SHARE Wave 2 dataset (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) and UN sources. He found that males are less likely to be retired compared with females in New Member States, which is the opposite result than he found for Old Member States. He explained that: "The reasons for these results can be the facts that significant gender wage gap exists in New Member States, household sizes are bigger in these countries than in Old Member States and males play important role in household income which make them retire less than females."

• Alba-Ramirez (1997) uses micro data from the Active Population Survey of Spain and logit model for analyzing determinants of retirement decision and finds that having more members in the household, and as well as children, has a negative effect on the probability of retirement among older males. This is an intuitive result as males in bigger household with children have to earn more and pension benefits will be less than needed for household.

• Antolin and Scarpetta (1998) using German Socio-Economic Panel and hazard model find that Socio-demographic factors such as health and gender have a strong impact on the retirement decision: women tend to retire earlier than men, and poor health makes people go into retirement, particularly in the case of disability retirement. The relationship between health status and retirement is significant for both self-assessed and objective indicators of health status. This is similar finding to the previous research of Blau and Riphahn (1997); using individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel as well, but controlling for different variables they found that if individual has chronic health condition, then he tends to retire. Antolin and Scarpetta (1998) use better measure for health status than Blau and Riphahn (1997), because self-assessed and objective indicators of health status are better measures than chronic health condition.

• Blöndal and Scarpetta (1999) find significant effect of socio-demographic factors on the retirement decision. Men tend to retire later than women as women try to benefit from special early retirement schemes in Germany and the Netherlands. Another reason is that they get access to pensions earlier than men as standard age of entitlement to pension is lower for women compared with men in Italy and the United Kingdom. The other interesting finding is that retirement depends on household size: heads of large households prefer not to retire. They think that this can be because of the significance of wages in large households compared with smaller ones and insufficiency of pension benefits. Another finding is that health status is significant factor in all early retirements; poor health conditions are especially significant if respondents join to disability benefit scheme. This result is true for both indicators used to express health status (self assessment and objective indicators). This research is similar to Antolin and Scarpetta (1998) and shows similar results extending sample and implications from Germany to OECD.

United States

• Quinn et al. (1998) find significant correlation between health status and retirement status. They transform answers for question about health status from five levels (“excellent”, “very good”, “good”, “fair” and “poor”) into three levels and report results for three groups of people. 85% of respondents who answered “excellent” or “very good” to the question about their health in 1992 were still working two years after this interview, compared to 82% of those who answered “good”, and 70% of those answered “fair” or “poor”. This fact is also true for year 1996: 73% of people from the first group were still on the job market, while this is 66% and 55% for other groups of people. However, Dhaval, Rashad and Spasojevic (2006) using data from six waves of Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) show that relationship between retirement and health status can imply the opposite effect in reality: physical and mental health decline after retirement.

• Benitez-Silva (2000) analyzes determinants of labor force status and retirement process among elderly US citizens and possibility of decision returning to work using logit and probit models. He uses Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) for this purpose and finds that physical and mental health has significant effect on becoming employed. Male respondents are more likely to change their status from being not-employed to employed, but being insured has a negative effect on switching job status from “not-employed” to “employed” for people aged 60–62 and insignificant effect for 55-59 and aged over 63.

Saving for retirement

Retired workers support themselves either through pensions or savings. In most cases the money is provided by the government, but sometimes granted only by private subscriptions to mutual funds. In this latter case, subscriptions might be compulsory or voluntary. In some countries an additional "bonus" is granted una tantum (once only) in proportion to the years of work and the average wages; this is usually provided by the employer.

The financial weight of provision of pensions on a government's budget is often heavy and is the reason for political debates about the retirement age. The state might be interested in a later retirement age for economic reasons.

The cost of health care in retirement is large, because people tend to be ill more frequently in later life. Most countries provide universal health insurance coverage for seniors, although in the United States many people retire before they become eligible for Medicare at age 65. In 2006, Medicare Part D went into effect, expanding benefits to include prescription drug coverage.

A poll made in Washington said many people were unaware that "medicare doesn't pay for the most common types of long-term care" (Neergaard); 37 percent of Americans who took the survey believe that it does cover it. Medicaid is a federal-state program for the needy and the main source seniors use to pay their long-term care.

Overall, income after retirement can come from state pensions, occupational pensions, private savings and investments (private pension funds, owned housing), donations (e.g. by children), and social benefits. On a personal level, the rising cost of living during retirement is a serious concern to many older adults. Health care costs play an important role.

Retirement calculators

A useful and straightforward calculation can be done if we assume that interest, after expenses, taxes and inflation is zero. Assume that in real (after-inflation) terms, your salary never changes during your w years of working life. During your p years of pension, you have a living standard which costs a replacement ratio R times as much as your living standard in your working life. Your working life living standard is your salary less the proportion of salary Z that you need to save. Calculations are per unit salary, e.g. assume salary = 1.

Then after w years work, retirement age accumulated savings = wZ. To pay for pension for p years, necessary savings at retirement = Rp(1-Z)

Equate these: wZ = Rp(1-Z) and solve to give Z = Rp / (w + Rp). For example, if w = 35, p = 30 and R = 0.65 we find that we need to save a proportion Z = 35.78% of our salary.

Retirement calculators generally accumulate a proportion of salary up to retirement age. This shows a straightforward case which nonetheless could be practically useful for optimistic people hoping to work for only as long as they are likely to be retired. References relevant to the zero real interest assumption are listed here

For more complicated situations, there are several online retirement calculators on the Internet. Many retirement calculators project how much an investor needs to save, and for how long, to provide a certain level of retirement expenditures. Some retirement calculators, appropriate for safe investments, assume a constant, unvarying rate of return. Monte Carlo retirement calculators take volatility into account, and project the probability that a particular plan of retirement savings, investments and expenditures will outlast the retiree. Retirement calculators vary in the extent to which they take taxes, social security, pensions, and other sources of retirement income and expenditures into account.

The assumptions keyed into a retirement calculator are critical. One of the most important assumptions, is the assumed rate of real (after inflation) investment return. A conservative return estimate could be based on the real yield of Inflation-indexed bonds offered by some governments, including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The TIP$TER retirement calculator projects the retirement expenditures that a portfolio of inflation-linked bonds, coupled with other income sources like Social Security, would be able to sustain. Current real yields on United States Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are available at the US Treasury site. Current real yields on Canadian 'Real Return Bonds' are available at the Bank of Canada's site. As of December, 2011, US Treasury inflation-linked bonds (TIPS) were yielding about 0.8% real per annum for the 30 year maturity and a noteworthy slightly negative real return for the 7 year maturity.

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Many individuals use 'retirement calculators' on the Internet to determine the proportion of their pay which they should be saving in a tax advantaged-plan (e.g. IRA or 401-K in the US, RRSP in Canada, personal pension in the UK, superannuation in Australia). After expenses and any taxes, a reasonable (though arguably pessimistic) long-term assumption for a safe real rate of return is zero. So in real terms, interest does not help the savings grow. Each year of work must pay its share of a year of retirement. For someone planning to work for 40 years and to be retired for 20 years, each year of work pays for itself and for half a year of retirement. Hence 33.33% of pay must be saved and 66.67% can be spent when earned. After 40 years of saving 33.33% of pay we have accumulated assets of 13.33 years of pay, as in the graph. In the graph to the right, the lines are straight, which is appropriate given the assumption of a zero real investment return.

The graph above can be compared with those generated by many retirement calculators. However, most retirement calculators use nominal (not 'real' dollars), and therefore require a projection of both the expected inflation rate and the expected nominal rate of return. One way to work around this limitation is to, for example, enter '0% return, 0% inflation' inputs into the calculator. The Bloomberg retirement calculator gives the flexibility to specify, for example, zero inflation and zero investment return and to reproduce the graph above. The MSN retirement calculator in 2011 has as the defaults a realistic 3% per annum inflation rate and optimistic 8% return assumptions; consistency with the December 2011 US nominal bond and inflation-protected bond market rates requires a change to about 3% inflation and 4% investment return before and after retirement.

Ignoring tax, someone wishing to work for a year and to then relax for a year on the same living standard needs to save 50% of pay. Similarly, someone wishing to work from age 25 to 55 and to be retired for 30 years till 85 needs to save 50% of pay if government and employment pensions are not a factor, and if it is considered appropriate to assume a zero real investment return. The problem that the lifespan is not known in advance can be reduced in some countries by the purchase at retirement of an inflation-indexed life annuity.

Retirement calculations

For most people, employer pensions, government pensions and the tax situation in their country are important factors, typically taken account of in calculations by actuaries. Ignoring those significant nation-specific factors but not necessarily assuming zero real interest rates, a 'not to be relied upon' calculation of required personal savings rate z^prop can be made using a little mathematics. It helps to have a dimly-remembered acquaintance with geometric series, maybe in the form

1 + r + r² + r³ + ... + rⁿ⁻¹ = (1 − rⁿ)/(1 − r)

You work for w years, saving a proportion z^prop of pay at the end of each year. So the after-savings purchasing power is (1-z^prop) of pay while you are working. You need a pension for p years. Let's say that at retirement you are earning S per year and require to replace a ratio R^repl of your pre-retirement living standard. So you need a pension of (1 – z^prop ) R^repl S, indexed to price inflation.

Let's assume that the investments, after price inflation f^price, earn a real rate i^real in real terms where

(1+ i^real ) = ((1+i^nominal))/((1+f^price ) ) (Ret-01)

Let's assume that the investments, after wage inflation f^pay, earn a real rate i ^{rel to pay} where

(1+ i ^{rel to pay} ) = ((1+i^nominal))/((1+f^pay ) ) (Ret-02)

Size of lump sum required

To pay for your pension, assumed for simplicity to be received at the end of each year, and taking discounted values in the manner of a net present value calculation, you need a lump sum available at retirement of:

(1 – z^prop ) R ^repl S {(1+ i^real ) ⁻¹+(1+ i^real ) ⁻² +… ….+ (1+ i^real ) ^-p} = (1-z^prop ) R ^repl S {(1 – (1+i^real)^-p )/i^real}

Above we have used the standard mathematical formula for the sum of a geometric series. (Or if i^real =0 then the series in braces sums to p since it then has p equal terms). As an example, assume that S=60,000 per year and that it is desired to replace R^repl=0.80, or 80%, of pre-retirement living standard for p=30 years. Assume for current purposes that a proportion z ^prop=0.25 (25%) of pay was being saved. Using i^real=0.02, or 2% per year real return on investments, the necessary lump sum is given by the formula as (1-0.25)*0.80*60,000*annuity-series-sum(30)=36,000*22.396=806,272 in the nation's currency in 2008–2010 terms. To allow for inflation in a straightforward way, it is best to talk of the 806,272 as being '13.43 years of retirement age salary'. It may be appropriate to regard this as being the necessary lump sum to fund 36,000 of annual supplements to any employer or government pensions that are available. It is common to not include any house value in the calculation of this necessary lump sum, so for a homeowner the lump sum pays primarily for non-housing living costs.

Size of lump sum saved

Will you have saved enough at retirement? Use our necessary but unrealistic assumption of a constant after-pay-rises rate of interest. At retirement you have accumulated

z^prop S {(1+ i ^{rel to pay} )^w-1+(1+ i ^{rel to pay} )^w-2 +… ….+ (1+ i ^{rel to pay} )+ 1 }

 = z^prop S ((1+i ^{rel to pay})^w- 1)/i ^{rel to pay}

Equate and derive necessary saving proportion

To make the accumulation match with the lump sum needed to pay your pension:

z^prop S (((1+i ^{rel to pay} )) ^w - 1)/i ^{rel to pay} = (1-z^prop ) R ^repl S (1 – ((1+i ^real)) ^-p )/i ^real

Bring z^prop to the left hand side to give our answer, under this rough and unguaranteed method, for the proportion of pay that we should be saving:

z^prop = R ^repl (1 – ((1+i ^real )) ^-p )/i ^real / [(((1+i ^{rel to pay} )) ^w - 1)/i ^{rel to pay} + R ^repl (1 – ((1+i ^real )) ^-p )/i ^real ] (Ret-03)

You are encouraged to download the use-at-your-own-financial-risk spreadsheet. The results in the spreadsheet can be seen to make sense. For example, working for 5 years and drawing a pension for 5 years requires you to save almost half your pay, with interest helping only a little.

Note that the special case i ^{rel to pay} =0 = i ^real means that we instead sum the geometric series by noting that we have p or w identical terms and hence z ^prop = p/(w+p). This corresponds to our graph above with the straight line real-terms accumulation.

Sample results

The result for the necessary z^prop given by (Ret-03) depends critically on the assumptions that you make. As an example, you might assume that price inflation will be 3.5% per year forever and that your pay will increase only at that same rate of 3.5%. If you assume a 4.5% per year nominal rate of interest, then (using 1.045/1.035 in real terms ) your pre-retirement and post-retirement net interest rates will remain the same, i^{rel to pay} = 0.966 percent per year and i^real = 0.966 percent per year. These assumptions may be reasonable in view of the market returns available on inflation-indexed bonds, after expenses and any tax. Equation (Ret-03) is readily coded in Excel and with these assumptions gives the required savings rates in the accompanying picture.

Monte Carlo: better allowance for randomness

Finally, a newer method for determining the adequacy of a retirement plan is Monte Carlo simulation. This method has been gaining popularity and is now employed by many financial planners. Monte Carlo retirement calculators allow users to enter savings, income and expense information and run simulations of retirement scenarios. The simulation results show the probability that the retirement plan will be successful.

Early retirement

Early retirement can be at any age, but is generally before the age (or tenure) needed for eligibility for support and funds from government or employer-provided sources. Thus, early-retirees rely on their own savings and investments to be initially self-supporting, until they start receiving such external support. Early retirement is also a euphemistic term for accepting termination of employment before retirement age as part of the employer's labor force rationalization. In this case, a monetary inducement may be involved.

Savings needed for early retirement

Further information: Withdrawal rate

While conventional wisdom has it that one can retire and take 7% or more out of a portfolio year after year, this would not have worked very often in the past. When making periodic inflation-adjusted withdrawals from retirement savings, can make meaningless many assumptions that are based on long term average investment returns.

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The chart at the right shows the year-to-year portfolio balances after taking $35,000 (and adjusting for inflation) from a $750,000 portfolio every year for 30 years, starting in 1973 (red line), 1974 (blue line), or 1975 (green line). While the overall market conditions and inflation affected all three about the same (since all three experienced exactly the same conditions between 1975 and 2003), the chance of making the funds last for 30 years depended heavily on what happened to the stock market in the first few years.

Those contemplating early retirement will want to know if they have enough to survive possible bear markets such as the one that would cause the hypothetical 1973 retiree's fund to be exhausted after only 20 years.

The history of the US stock market shows that one would need to live on about 4% of the initial portfolio per year to ensure that the portfolio is not depleted before the end of the retirement; this rule of thumb is a summary of one conclusion of the Trinity study, though the report is more nuanced and the conclusions and very approach have been heavily criticized (see Trinity study for details). This allows for increasing the withdrawals with inflation to maintain a consistent spending ability throughout the retirement, and to continue making withdrawals even in dramatic and prolonged bear markets. (The 4% figure does not assume any pension or change in spending levels throughout the retirement.)

When retiring prior to age ​59 ¹⁄₂, there is a 10% IRS penalty on withdrawals from a retirement plan such as a 401(k) plan or a Traditional IRA. Exceptions apply under certain circumstances. At age 59 and six months, the penalty-free status is achieved and the 10% IRS penalty no longer applies.

To avoid the 10% penalty prior to age ​59 ¹⁄₂, a person should consult a lawyer about the use of IRS rule 72 T. This rule must be applied for with the IRS. It allows the distribution of an IRA account prior to age ​59 ¹⁄₂ in equal amounts of a period of either 5 years or until the age of ​59 ¹⁄₂, whichever is the longest time period, without a 10% penalty. Taxes still must be paid on the distributions.

Calculations using actual numbers

Although the 4% initial portfolio withdrawal rate described above can be used as a rough gauge, it is often desirable to use a retirement planning tool that accepts detailed input and can render a result that has more precision. Some of these tools model only the retirement phase of the plan while others can model both the savings or accumulation phase as well as the retirement phase of the plan. For example, an analysis by Forbes reckoned that in 90% of historical markets, a 4% rate would have lasted for at least 30 years, while in 50% of the historical markets, a 4% rate would have been sustained for more than 40 years.

The effects of making inflation-adjusted withdrawals from a given starting portfolio can be modeled with a downloadable spreadsheet that uses historical stock market data to estimate likely portfolio returns. Another approach is to employ a retirement calculator that also uses historical stock market modeling, but adds provisions for incorporating pensions, other retirement income, and changes in spending that may occur during the course of the retirement.

Life after retirement

See also: Retiree

Retirement might coincide with important life changes; a retired worker might move to a new location, for example a retirement community, thereby having less frequent contact with their previous social context and adopting a new lifestyle. Often retirees volunteer for charities and other community organizations. Tourism is a common marker of retirement and for some becomes a way of life, such as for so-called grey nomads. Some retired people even choose to go and live in warmer climates in what is known as retirement migration.

It has been found that Americans have six lifestyle choices as they age: continuing to work full-time, continuing to work part-time, retiring from work and becoming engaged in a variety of leisure activities, retiring from work and becoming involved in a variety of recreational and leisure activities, retiring from work and later returning to work part-time, and retiring from work and later returning to work full-time. An important note to make from these lifestyle definitions are that four of the six involve working. America is facing an important demographic change in that the Baby Boomer generation is now reaching retirement age. This poses two challenges: whether there will be a sufficient number of skilled workers in the work force, and whether the current pension programs will be sufficient to support the growing number of retired people. The reasons that some people choose to never retire, or to return to work after retiring include not only the difficulty of planning for retirement but also wages and fringe benefits, expenditure of physical and mental energy, production of goods and services, social interaction, and social status may interact to influence an individual’s work force participation decision.

Often retirees are called upon to care for grandchildren and occasionally aged parents. For many it gives them more time to devote to a hobby or sport such as golf or sailing. On the other hand, many retirees feel restless and suffer from depression as a result of their new situation. Although it is not scientifically possible to directly show that retirement either causes or contributes to depression, the newly retired are one of the most vulnerable societal groups when it comes to depression most likely due to confluence of increasing age and deteriorating health status. Retirement coincides with deterioration of one's health that correlates with increasing age and this likely plays a major role in increased rates of depression in retirees. Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have shown that healthy elderly and retired people are as happy or happier and have an equal quality of life as they age as compared to younger employed adults, therefore retirement in and of itself is not likely to contribute to development of depression.

Many people in the later years of their lives, due to failing health, require assistance, sometimes in extremely expensive treatments – in some countries – being provided in a nursing home. Those who need care, but are not in need of constant assistance, may choose to live in a retirement home.

See also

• Simple living
• Downshifting
• Pension
• Ageing
• Mandatory retirement
• Gerontology
• Social security
• Retirement spend down
• Asset/liability modeling
• LGBT retirement issues

Further reading

• Schultz, Ellen E., RETIREMENT HEIST: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers", Penguin Publishing, 2011

External links

• "Retirement Simulation",
• "Historical Development", Social Security Administration
• Short, Joanna, "Economic History of Retirement in the U.S.", 2010-02-01, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois