When Do You Want to Retire?

Hey Monkeys,

I recently came across an article in US News & World Report titled "The New Ideal Retirement Age: 67". Emily Brandon examines workers' retirement tendencies in this article over the past few years and I thought some of you might find it interesting, but I'd imagine some readers on here hope to retire before 67.

The age the typical worker expects to retire is no longer 65. For the first time this year, Americans expect to retire at an average age of 67, up from 66 in 2011, according to a recent Gallup poll of 1,016 adults. The average expected retirement age and been gradually increasing over the past seventeen years from age 60 in 1995 to 64 in 2005.

Financial insecurity may be compelling many workers to delay retirement. “There has been a lot of fallout from the financial crisis,” says Dennis Jacobe, Gallup’s chief economist. “There was a huge loss of savings and investments and housing values and all of those things have hurt potential retirees.” The Gallup survey found that the majority of current workers (55 percent) don’t expect to have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, up significantly from 42 percent in 2007 and just 32 percent in 2002. The proportion of people who expect to feel financially secure in retirement declined from 59 percent to 38 percent over the same time period.

So what do you think about this? Have your plans for retirement changed over the past few years? Do you expect to retire before the 'ideal' age of 67?

 

• I think the study is fair • My retirement plans have not changed at all over the last couple years • I hope to retire from my 'real job' before 67, but continue 'working' on something my entire life

pretty sure this will be the same sentiment of 90% of the board

.
 

Never. Most likely not working in the financial world...but building something worthwhile.

There are few studies that show that people who retire and sit on the beach...keel over faster than those who stay engaged in a pursuit.

Please don't quote Patrick Bateman.
 

I am planning to "retire" (read: quit a corporate job and become a small business owner) in around 25 years from now, which would put me at age 50. Check out the blog called Mr. Money Mustache to see how this can be done. (I would post the link but I'm a longtime lurker who has finally decided to start posting).

 

Breaking Bad's Walter White gave me something to think about on the issue of mortality. I think it was a bit of perspective. I don't want to wind up asking myself at 50 years old "what happened?" By 55-ish, I'd like to be out the door or well on my way out, and on to teaching college, traveling, and being a nice person where possible.

in it 2 win it
 

I would like to work as long as my body allows me to. We're in a field where we get paid MORE with time and experience.

______ Corporate financial/business analyst looking for career/MBA/CFA advice.
 

i hope to never retire, but to move from CEO to Chairman around the age of 70 and move day to day operations of my shop to a younger employee of mine, who I've been vetting and training for 20 years. I will remain chairman of IC and meet frequently with our LPs for marketing reasons, as my name will be on the door...

 
International Pymp:

i hope to never retire, but to move from CEO to Chairman around the age of 70 and move day to day operations of my shop to a younger employee of mine, who I've been vetting and training for 20 years. I will remain chairman of IC and meet frequently with our LPs for marketing reasons, as my name will be on the door...

Do you still want to be managing other people's money and dealing with all the SEC/FINRA red tapes at 70? Fundraising and dealing with investors do get tiresome after a while and the larger your AUM and more LPs you have the worse it can get. I bet at some point you will want to be running your own family office/foundation instead, like Soros and others have decided.
Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

I never plan on retiring, with that said, I do plan on pursuing more of my own goals and projects. I look at people like Irving Kahn and they're still managing funds well beyond when most people retire. I'm probably going to plan to strategically pivot in my mid to late sixties, towards something I can pursue wholeheartedly, but perhaps at a reduced workload.

 

I am going to retire the absolute millisecond I find it feasible. I'd like to have enough money to know that I'm secure no matter how long I live and can assist my children with some financial help. I don't want to have any affiliation with any type of business aside from maybe teaching part time. I want to live in Florida, play golf 5 times per week, have a beer at lunch regularly, go to dinner when I want and wake up and enjoy my coffee while not having a work related stress burden on my shoulders and answering to no one but my wife. I find it insane that 99% of people don't strive for this or something similar.

giddy up
 
KramerTheAssMan:

I am going to retire the absolute millisecond I find it feasible. I'd like to have enough money to know that I'm secure no matter how long I live and can assist my children with some financial help. I don't want to have any affiliation with any type of business aside from maybe teaching part time. I want to live in Florida, play golf 5 times per week, have a beer at lunch regularly, go to dinner when I want and wake up and enjoy my coffee while not having a work related stress burden on my shoulders and answering to no one but my wife. I find it insane that 99% of people don't strive for this or something similar.

Finally a sane response in this thread. Do the rest of you guys have no intellectual curiosity? There are so many fascinating books you could read, museums you could visit, cultures to experience...

"My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known."
 

Seriously though. The rest of the people on this board must sleep in the office and have never seen anything outside of the office across the street. Its all just a means to an end. Get a modest house in a tropical place when your 65 and live it out doing whatever the f@#k you want for the next 30 years. How can anyone see trying to teach college econ classes at 75 years old to freshman as a great plan for retirement?

 

I never plan on fully retiring. Hopefully I'll be successful enough to quit my "day job" around 45 and then spend the rest of my life working on entrepreneurial endeavors and mentoring younger professionals.

Another alternative I've been throwing around is to go back and finally get my Ph.D in Economics and then teach at local colleges as an adjunct faculty member / lecturer / non-tenure track. I absolutely love teaching but would never want to engage in a full-time career scrambling for tenure at a college. And teaching at the high school level is a significant time investment that I'm not willing to make this early in my career, not to mention I'm not mature enough yet to deal with discipline.

Currently: future neurologist, current psychotherapist Previously: investor relations (top consulting firm), M&A consulting (Big 4), M&A banking (MM)
 
Best Response

I absolutely love what I do, so I think the moment I feel like I'm punching a clock, I'm out, my clients deserve nothing but the best from me. thankfully our practice has a great succession planning mechanism so that they're taken care of when I go.

my dad is getting his PhD currently, and loves it despite the politics involved with dissertation approval. some of my profs in college had the absolute best gig ever, so if I went back to school I'd try to do what they did. I went to a coastal university, a great place to retire needless to say. there happened to be a world class country club near my college that was prohibitively expensive except for the 0.01%.

What happened is these old farts who were execs at F100 companies or entrepreneurs got bored of playing 6 rounds of golf each week and signed up as adjunct faculty/lecturers, most if not all of them without a PhD. what it leads to is unforgettable experiences/stories for the students, a way to get real world teaching (instead of Eugene Fama's theory, I'd much rather have BlackHat teach a capital markets course), and a way for the retirees to stay sharp.

retire near a college and you'll never be bored.

 

I hope to die driving a fast car into something very hard at triple digits before I get too old. So I guess I don't have a plan for conventional retirement.

 

I think this thread is ultimately reflecting the "how much is enough?" question, just in a slightly different way. In reality, many on this board will probably have the means to retire comfortably at 40-50. But for some people, if they're pulling down $1-$5mm a year, there's nothing that is going to get them out of that seat.

My wife did just take out a huge life insurance policy on me, so I probably won't make it to see retirement...

 
DickFuld:
jankynoname:

In reality, many on this board will probably have the means to retire comfortably at 40-50.

In what reality? Very, very few people on this board will ever even make it into or stick with high finance and significantly fewer will be able to comfortably retire in their forties.

I suppose you're right given the churn and burnout in finance. I just figured anyone who sticks with a banking, IM or consulting career into their 40s should be pulling down $400k-$1mm+ fairly consistently. You only need so many years of that before you can cut the chord... Obviously this does not assume you live out the rest of your days in Manhattan or SF.

 

This. I just can't understand how someone can decide to do nothing. Who the hell wants to play golf 5x/week and drink beer at lunch when they can do the same thing as part of a job and do something useful? Or play golf, drink and walk into class and be the awesome econ professor who teaches IS/LM tipsy? I'd die if I sat down and did nothing all day. Actually, I think that's what happens to most people who do.

in it 2 win it
 
DCDepository:

This might surprise some people in this thread, but not everyone's personality is designed for sitting on the beach and playing golf. That sounds like a week long vacation, not a lifestyle. In August I'm taking my first true, actual vacation since 2002 because being idle is painfully boring--I need to be challenged intellectually.

Are you not capable of challenging yourself intellectually without working at a structured job? I've learned more from my independent reading than I ever did at work or in college.

"My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known."
 
Illuminate:

Are you not capable of challenging yourself intellectually without working at a structured job? I've learned more from my independent reading than I ever did at work or in college.

It's not so much an issue of capability as enjoyability... I love the kind of stimulation I get when I solve a problem for a team, or teach a group of students, etc. That far surpasses the stimulation I get from reading (though don't get me wrong, I have a ton of quirky subjects I'd love to read more about). I'm sure we can all get intellectual satisfaction from independent endeavors, but some of us might just prefer a more structured setting because we enjoy it... /shrug
Currently: future neurologist, current psychotherapist Previously: investor relations (top consulting firm), M&A consulting (Big 4), M&A banking (MM)
 
Illuminate:
DCDepository:

This might surprise some people in this thread, but not everyone's personality is designed for sitting on the beach and playing golf. That sounds like a week long vacation, not a lifestyle. In August I'm taking my first true, actual vacation since 2002 because being idle is painfully boring--I need to be challenged intellectually.

Are you not capable of challenging yourself intellectually without working at a structured job? I've learned more from my independent reading than I ever did at work or in college.

I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

 

I don't seek retiring as much as I seek the ability to retire. Working into old age because you love what you do is very different than working at 75 because you lived high on the hog for years and didn't save enough to retire. IMO, the definition of FU money is the ability to walk away from your job and maintain a lifestyle that you're happy with. It doesn't have to be a lavish lifestyle, just one you're happy with. The FU money number will obviously vary greatly between people. Working on something you enjoy with FU money might be great in old age.

The other thing is that we have a stability bias that makes us believe that our preferences will not change over time. It is in fact very difficult to predict what your preferences and life situation will be years down the road. For this reason, I think it's a good idea to live below you're means while you're working so that you have the option to do what you want when you're in a later stage in life.

"This is the business we've chosen"!
 

Good point, Hyman. I think a lot of this will depend on our wives, kids, divorces (divorce DESTROYS finances), state of the economy, our lucky or unlucky breaks, our investments, etc.--basically, our future circumstances and evolving interests will really determine what we do when we're 50+. For example, if you have FU money but you have 5 adults kids living in your area with grandchildren and your wife wants to live close to her inlaws in the area then it's unlikely you're going to move from your NYC suburb to Key West, even if you could afford it. Maybe as a result you keep on working in your career instead of retiring.

 

I'm thoroughly confused why people would work in a career field that they hate and then lecture people about how THEY should feel about retiring, as if there were a right answer. Why doesn't an extrovert tell an introvert that he should go crazy by being alone on a Friday night? Why doesn't a woman tell a man they he should hate watching sports? Why doesn't a dog tell a cat that milk isn't a tasty beverage?

 

I just don't understand why people like you are telling others how they should feel about retirement. It makes no sense. Literally there are several posts in this thread saying that the rest of us are being illogical, that our position on retirement makes no sense. Ya know what? Your position on retirement makes no sense to me.

 

There is an article up on yahoo that says people in their twenties will likely need 7MM to retire. Looks like I'm good. Can proceed to spend money like its going out of style.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

@"heister" I think this is this the Yahoo article you are referencing, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Quite interesting, this kind of sums it up for those who haven't read it.

Maybe you'll never hit $7 million or even $1 million in savings, but the point is to make a goal, save for it, and hope for the best. Chances are you will be far better off than had you done nothing at all.
 

the $7mm is highly subjective and depends on lifestyle, income sources after retirement, and willingness to accept volatility. a quick back-of-the-envelope way to determine how much you'll need is divide your desired annual budget by 4%. 4% is very conservative, but better safe than sorry in my opinion.

also, the article doesn't look at the other side of inflation. just because cost of living goes up doesn't mean the capital markets won't help you out. it says something like "you'll need to SAVE X to get to this figure," when really you just need to save consistently and invest wisely over a long period of time, and allow compounding to do the rest. assuming said 20 year old retires at 67, that's 47 years of compounded inflation, which I would personally model at 4%. in today's dollars, assuming annual compounding, that's only 1,108,000 roughly, VERY attainable for someone in IBD who maxes out his 401k and sticks to a solid investment plan. granted, that assumes you put that figure in the bank today and let it compound out until age 67 at 4% linear, but again, it's an estimate.

put another way, let's say you didn't start maxing out your 401k until you were 30 and were an Associate (and no prior contributions), and you sucked at investing and only got 6% a year, that's still 37 years of compounding and you'd still get to 7.3mm. the key here is diligence in your savings and being mindful of your emotions. emotions may be your undoing if you try to tactically allocate your 401k to pick up incremental return here and there. stick to your investment program, contribute as much as you can, and do your trading on the side.

 

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