I recently came across an interesting Federal Reserve report called ‘The Economic Well-Being Of US Households’.  It’s a 50+ page annual study that explores all aspects of Americans’ financial well-being.  The good news is that on almost all measures and for almost all groups of Americans, they are on a better financial footing than almost ever.

In the retirement section, I was struck by a table that showed the ‘Reasons For Retirement’ that they had collected through survey data.  They had the results split by age groups, so you could look at ‘Early Retirees’ – those retired at age 61 or younger, and those retired later.  I was surprised at how high ‘Health’ and ‘Job Related’ was for this group:

• 55% – Wanted To Do Other Things
• 51% – Wanted To Spend Time With Family
• 40% – Poor Health
• 32% – Family Responsibilities
• 30% – Didn’t Like The Work
• 21% – Forced To Retire / Laid Off

The reasons given are not exclusive to each other.  People could retire early for a number of reasons at the same time.  Still, ‘Poor Health’ and ‘Laid Off’ represent a huge percent of early retirees.  I would guesstimate that they represents close to HALF of early retirees – especially given that some respondents may not want to acknowledge negative circumstances in a survey.  (AnUrban Institute study suggested that the number of folks ‘forced’ into retirement rose from 33% in 1998 to 55% in 2014)

I had a few colleagues at MegaCorp that had parents that had suffered in a ‘forced’ retirement and were aggressively pursuing FIRE (financial independence & retiring early) for themselves.  Looking at these numbers, it would seem that everyone should expect that these are very real considerations and should be planned / saved for.  Clearly, not everyone can plan on reaching the ‘standard’ age 65 retirement.

Are you surprised by how many people are ‘forced’ into retirement?

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