MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors

What Is the Ideal Retirement Age for Your Health?

Five takeaways:

1. Several countries are considering raising their retirement age to offset the economic pressures of aging population. While a later retirement age may have clear overall economic benefits, the physical and mental implications of making such a drastic collective change must be considered.
2. While life expectancies have gone up over the last hundred years, the type of work people are doing has also changed. In 2020, roughly 45 percent of the American labor force worked in a knowledge-based field, such as management, business and finance, education, and health care. In 1935, these types of professions accounted for just 6 percent of the workforce.
3. Experts think that the collective rise of knowledge-based jobs makes a higher retirement age a bit more reasonable, as cognitive properties stay sharp into one’s 70s. Staying at work in some capacity has shown to have health benefits for people in their 70s as well, as long as the work is not physically laborious.
4. This is not to say that a raised retirement age should be instituted across the board. Jobs that are more hands-on, active, and laborious, might in fact require a slightly younger retirement age. There is research that shows retirement around the mid-sixties from physically challenging work can lead to stronger cognitive output.
5. Overall, the article shows that a single, uniform retirement age is always going to be imperfect. There are too many factors– the type of work, a worker’s ethnic background or socioeconomic status– to find a perfect number. On an individual level, we should take every step we can to ensure that our retirements are healthy, physically, mentally, and financially.

From Dana G. Smith at The New York Times:
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