Should You Retire Now? The Question Isn’t Just Whether You Can Afford It

There is a reason retirement decisions can remain difficult even after the financial plan says everything works. Another year of salary adds savings. Another year without portfolio withdrawals gives investments more time to grow. Social Security benefits may increase, and employer health insurance may remain in place. From a purely financial perspective, continuing to work frequently makes retirement safer.

But financial safety is not the only resource being consumed. Every additional year of work also uses a year of time, and unlike money, time cannot be earned back later. A 64-year-old who delays retirement until 68 may end up with a larger portfolio but four fewer years in which health, energy and family circumstances might support the travel, relationships and experiences that motivated retirement in the first place.

That is why the question “Can I afford to retire?” is incomplete. Once basic financial readiness has been established, the more difficult question becomes whether the incremental financial benefit of continuing to work is worth the life being exchanged for it.

Working Longer Almost Always Makes the Spreadsheet Look Better

There is no mystery about why financial projections reward another year of employment. The worker continues receiving income instead of drawing from investments, may contribute more to retirement accounts, can receive another year of employer matching contributions and gives the portfolio another year to compound.

Social Security can create an additional incentive. For someone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67. Delaying benefits beyond 67 increases the monthly benefit until age 70, when it reaches 124% of the full-retirement-age amount. The increase stops at 70.

That makes working longer financially attractive, particularly for someone who needs the additional salary to avoid claiming Social Security early or drawing heavily from investments. A household whose retirement plan is marginal at 62 may look considerably stronger at 65 or 67.

The danger appears when “stronger” quietly becomes “never strong enough.” A plan with a large margin of safety can almost always be improved by another year of earnings, but maximizing wealth and determining when to retire are not the same objective.

Most People Do Not Retire When They Expect To

Workers tend to assume they will control the retirement date more precisely than reality allows. The Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey found that workers still expect to retire at a median age of 65, while actual retirees reported a median retirement age of 62. Nearly half said they retired earlier than planned.

The reasons are particularly important. Among retirees who left earlier than expected in 2026, 41% cited a health problem or disability, 35% cited changes at their employer such as downsizing or reorganization, and 36% said they could afford to retire sooner. Respondents could select multiple reasons, but EBRI found that 76% of early retirees cited at least one circumstance outside their control.

That gap between planned and actual retirement should influence anyone considering whether to work several more years. A job that exists today may not exist in the same form at 67. Health that supports full-time work today may also change before the carefully chosen retirement date arrives.

The lesson is not to retire prematurely because something might go wrong. It is to avoid designing a retirement plan that requires everything to go right.

Health Is Part of the Retirement Balance Sheet

Financial plans measure assets because they are easy to quantify. Health is harder to place on a spreadsheet, even though it can determine whether retirement savings produce the life someone imagined.

Someone may expect to spend retirement hiking, traveling internationally, playing golf or caring for grandchildren. Those activities require more than money. They require mobility, energy and enough physical resilience to tolerate long days, flights and unfamiliar environments.

Working longer can be completely reasonable when someone enjoys the job and remains healthy. The tradeoff changes when employment is contributing to chronic stress, preventing exercise, disrupting sleep or repeatedly postponing medical care. In that situation, the salary is not merely purchasing a stronger retirement portfolio; it may also be consuming some of the health the portfolio was supposed to support.

That is why signs that work is materially damaging health deserve to be treated as financial information. Retirement security does little good if the process of achieving the last increment of security leaves someone less capable of enjoying it.

Time Has an Opportunity Cost Too

Financial planning routinely teaches opportunity cost. Spend $20,000 today and that money loses decades of potential investment growth. The same principle should be applied to time.

Working another year does not simply add another year’s salary. It also costs a year during which the retiree could have been traveling, caring for grandchildren, developing friendships, pursuing hobbies or simply controlling the structure of the day.

That exchange can still be worthwhile. Someone who loves work may view employment itself as meaningful, while another person may need additional savings to avoid putting the household at genuine financial risk. But the cost should be acknowledged rather than treated as zero.

The older someone becomes, the more consequential that calculation can be. Money saved at 67 may still be available at 80. The opportunity to take a physically demanding trip at 67 may not be.

Ask Whether Life Feels Like It Is Being Postponed

One useful retirement question has nothing to do with investment returns: Does it feel as though the life you want keeps being pushed into the future?

A temporary delay can make sense. Someone may work through the end of a year to secure a pension benefit, finish paying a mortgage or reach Medicare eligibility. Those are identifiable milestones with clear financial value.

A recurring pattern is different. First retirement moves from 62 to 65 because the portfolio could be bigger. Then it moves to 67 because Social Security improves. Then another year appears attractive because markets were weak, or because the bonus is good, or because leaving suddenly feels uncomfortable.

There will almost always be a financial argument for one more year. The question is whether the additional money materially changes the retirement or merely makes an already viable plan even more conservative.

If the answer is the latter, continuing to work should require a life reason too.

Retirement Should Not Be an Escape From a Bad Week

The emotional side of the decision cuts both ways. A frustrating boss, stressful quarter or exhausting commute can make retirement suddenly look irresistible, but temporary dissatisfaction is not enough to justify a permanent financial decision.

Before leaving, it helps to distinguish between wanting to retire and wanting the current job to change. Part-time work, consulting, remote work, a different employer or a temporary sabbatical may solve the problem without requiring someone to fully abandon employment.

This can be especially useful for people whose financial plans are close but not yet comfortable. Cutting work from five days to three may preserve employer income while immediately returning meaningful time. Consulting several months a year can reduce portfolio withdrawals without recreating the lifestyle that made full-time work undesirable.

Retirement does not have to be an on-off switch. For many people, a gradual transition can capture part of the financial benefit of continuing to work while returning time sooner.

Know What the Extra Year Actually Buys You

“Working one more year” is too vague to be useful. The better approach is to calculate precisely what that year changes.

Suppose working until 66 instead of 65 increases retirement assets from $1.8 million to $1.95 million and reduces the projected initial withdrawal rate from 3.4% to 3.0%. That may be reassuring, but the household should ask whether moving from an already manageable withdrawal rate to an even lower one meaningfully changes the probability of success.

The conclusion may be very different if another year reduces the required withdrawal rate from 5.5% to 4.7%, allows a large mortgage to be eliminated or provides healthcare coverage until Medicare begins. In that case, the financial benefit may materially strengthen the plan.

Putting numbers around the additional year prevents endless postponement. The decision becomes a comparison between a measurable financial improvement and one additional year of life spent working.

The Retirement Plan Needs a Margin of Safety, Not Perfection

No credible financial projection can guarantee that retirement will succeed. Market returns are uncertain, inflation varies, healthcare expenses can surprise households and nobody knows exactly how long they will live.

Waiting until every conceivable risk has disappeared therefore means waiting forever. Retirement readiness should instead involve enough margin that the household can absorb unfavorable outcomes without immediately threatening essential spending.

That can include maintaining emergency reserves, carrying appropriate insurance, keeping portfolio withdrawals within a reasonable range and retaining some discretionary spending that can be reduced during difficult years. A household with those protections does not need every market year to cooperate.

Stress testing is useful because it distinguishes genuine financial fragility from ordinary uncertainty. If retirement fails under modestly unfavorable assumptions, another year of work may be valuable. If the plan remains strong through poor markets, higher inflation and long life expectancy, refusing to retire may no longer be about financial necessity.

Relationships Can Be Another Reason Not to Wait

Retirement is usually discussed as an individual financial milestone, but many of its most valuable experiences involve other people.

Adult children may currently live nearby but relocate later. Grandchildren move through childhood quickly. Parents and siblings age. Friends who are healthy enough to travel together today may not be able to do the same trip a decade from now.

Time with other people therefore has its own expiration risk. A retiree who postpones every experience until the portfolio reaches another milestone may eventually discover that the money remains available while the people involved do not.

That does not mean every relationship requires full retirement. It does mean that family and friendships deserve a place in the calculation alongside Social Security and investment balances.

A retirement plan that funds a lifestyle but never creates the time to live it is incomplete.

Do You Know What You Are Retiring Toward?

One reason people continue working after the financial need has diminished is that employment provides far more than a paycheck. It creates structure, social interaction, identity, status and a reason to be somewhere each morning.

Leaving without replacing those functions can turn retirement into an unexpectedly difficult transition. Someone who knows only what they want to escape may discover that the absence of work leaves a larger hole than expected.

Before retiring, it helps to imagine an ordinary Tuesday rather than a vacation. Where will the morning be spent? Who will you see? What activities create purpose? How much social contact will naturally occur once coworkers disappear from everyday life?

The strongest retirement decision therefore considers both financial readiness and lifestyle readiness. Someone financially prepared but emotionally unprepared may benefit from a gradual transition, while a person with a clear vision of retirement may have much more reason to value the time another working year would consume.

Do Not Assume You Can Always Work Later

One of the weakest retirement strategies is planning to work indefinitely because the household has not saved enough. Employment can certainly supplement retirement income, and many people genuinely want some form of paid work after leaving their primary careers.

The problem is relying on it. In the 2026 EBRI survey, 74% of workers expected to work for pay in retirement, while only 31% of retirees reported actually doing so. That gap illustrates how plans to continue earning money can collide with health, caregiving responsibilities, job availability or simply changing preferences.

Someone deciding whether to retire today should therefore be cautious about a plan that works only because substantial future employment income is assumed. Optional work can be valuable. Required work is a different financial condition.

A robust retirement plan should ideally function without indefinite employment, leaving paid work as something the retiree chooses rather than something the household desperately needs.

Financial Independence Should Eventually Buy Independence

Saving becomes psychologically difficult to stop because accumulation has a simple scoreboard. A larger portfolio looks better than a smaller one. A higher Social Security benefit looks better than a lower one. Another year of earnings seems safer than beginning withdrawals.

But maximizing each financial metric individually does not necessarily maximize a life. Someone can make the portfolio larger by working until 75, spend less by canceling every trip and preserve even more by avoiding gifts to family. Those choices are financially conservative, but that does not automatically make them successful retirement planning.

The purpose of financial independence is eventually to reduce the degree to which money dictates how time must be spent. Once a household can support the desired lifestyle with a reasonable margin for uncertainty, continuing to trade substantial amounts of time solely for additional wealth should receive more scrutiny.

Enough is not the highest balance that can possibly be accumulated. It is the point at which more money stops changing the life very much.

Retirement Does Not Require Claiming Social Security Immediately

One common misconception is that retiring and claiming Social Security must occur together. They are separate decisions.

Someone may retire at 64 while using taxable investments or other assets to delay Social Security. For workers born in 1960 or later, delaying from full retirement age of 67 until 70 increases the monthly benefit to 124% of the full-retirement-age amount. That can provide a larger inflation-adjusted income floor later in retirement without requiring the person to remain employed until 70.

The tradeoff is that portfolio assets must fund the gap before Social Security begins, so delaying is not appropriate for everyone. Someone with limited savings or poor health may reasonably choose differently.

Separating the two decisions can nevertheless remove an artificial obstacle. A person does not necessarily need to choose between working longer and sacrificing a larger future Social Security benefit.

Sometimes Another Year Really Is Worth It

An article about the value of time should not become an argument for retiring as early as possible. For households with insufficient savings, high debt or large unavoidable expenses, another year of work can dramatically improve retirement security.

The additional year may also protect a surviving spouse by allowing the higher earner to delay Social Security, build more savings or eliminate debt. Someone whose job remains enjoyable may see little cost in continuing, particularly when employment provides purpose and social engagement rather than stress.

The important distinction is whether work is solving a problem. If another year closes a meaningful financial gap, it has a clear objective. If the household already has substantial excess capacity and the only reason to continue is that more always feels safer, the decision deserves another look.

Good retirement planning is not about choosing time instead of money. It is about recognizing the point at which another dollar has less value than another year.

The Best Retirement Date Is a Life Decision Supported by Math

There is no questionnaire that can tell everyone when to retire. Feeling exhausted does not eliminate the need for adequate savings, and reaching a particular portfolio balance does not mean someone must stop working.

The strongest decision begins with financial viability. Estimate actual retirement spending, calculate Social Security and other reliable income, determine what the portfolio must provide and stress-test the plan against poor markets, inflation, longevity and major expenses. If those calculations fail, more work or a different retirement lifestyle may be necessary.

If they succeed comfortably, the questions should change. Is work damaging your health? Are experiences repeatedly being deferred? Are important relationships receiving less time than you want to give them? Would another working year materially improve your life later, or merely increase an already sufficient account balance?

The 2026 retirement data are a useful reminder that the retirement date is not always ours to choose. Workers expect to retire at 65, yet retirees report a median actual age of 62, and health problems remain one of the most important reasons people leave earlier than planned.

That reality argues for financial preparation, but it also argues against assuming the healthiest years can always be postponed. Money is renewable. Careers can sometimes be restarted. Portfolio balances can rise and fall.

Time only moves in one direction, which means the best retirement plan must protect more than the money needed for the future. It must also protect enough of the future to enjoy the money.

You should always consult a financial, tax, or legal professional familiar about your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions. This material is intended for educational purposes only. Nothing in this material constitutes a solicitation for the sale or purchase of any securities. Any mentioned rates of return are historical or hypothetical in nature and are not a guarantee of future returns.

Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Future returns may be lower or higher. Investments involve risk. Investment values will fluctuate with market conditions, and security positions, when sold, may be worth less or more than their original cost.