Retirement
By
Julia Kagan
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Julia Kagan has written about personal finance for more than 25 years and for Investopedia since 2014. The former editor of Consumer Reports, she is an expert in credit and debt, retirement planning, home ownership, employment issues, and insurance. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College (A.B., history) and has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington College.
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Updated July 16, 2021
Reviewed by
Thomas J. Catalano
Reviewed by
Thomas J. Catalano
Full Bio
Thomas J Catalano is a CFP and Registered Investment Adviser with the state of South Carolina, where he launched his own financial advisory firm in 2018.Thomas' experience gives him expertise in a variety of areas including investments, retirement, insurance, and financial planning.
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What Is Retirement?
Retirement refers to the time of life when one chooses to permanently leave the workforce behind. The traditional retirement age is 65 in the United States and most other developed countries, many of which have some kind of national pension or benefits system in place to supplement retirees' incomes. In the U.S., for example, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been offering retirees monthly Social Security income benefits since 1935.
Key Takeaways
- Retirement is when someone leaves the workforce for good.
- In the U.S., the full retirement age (when the individual can collect full Social Security benefits) is 67 years old, and the early retirement age is 62 (the earliest age someone can collect Social Security benefits).
- Traditionally, the retirement age was 65, and, most people live 15 to 20 years after turning 65 (on average).
- How much to save for retirement depends in part, on how long you'll expect to live in retirement and how much annual income you'll need to live comfortably.
- When getting closer to retirement, investors should be doing several things, including aggressively paying down debt, making maximum contributions to retirement accounts (including utilizing catch-up contributions), and assessing asset allocation for changing investment time horizons and risk profile.
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