Retirement Age: 5 Questions to Help You Choose a Date

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Retirement Age: 5 Questions to Help You Choose a Date

There’s no rule governing when people must retire. Statistics show common retirement ages, but the right age for retirement is truly different for everyone.

Money is the obvious first place to begin for many people. Retirement has to be paid for.

So it makes sense to look at savings, Social Security, monthly expenses, taxes, healthcare costs, and any other sources of income and expenses before deciding when work might become optional.

But money isn’t the only important factor.

The age you retire also can be shaped by health, jobs, family (including when your spouse plans to retire), physical energy, sense of purpose, bucket lists, and what you want your retirement days to look like.

In other words, retirement is a transition of just about every aspect of your life.

So instead of asking only, “When can I retire?” it may help to ask a bigger question:

When could life line up well enough for me to retirement?

Here are five practical questions to help think it through.

1. Money: At what age will your resources support the retirement lifestyle you want?

Life’s expenses don’t go away when you stop working.

Deciding what age to retire often is dictated by when you’ll have enough money to stop working — or when you’ll have enough to live the retirement lifestyle you want.

Retirement income can come from many different sources:

• Social Security
• Pensions
• Savings
• Retirement accounts
• Non-retirement investments
• Rental income
• Part-time work
• Spouse income
• Gifts
• Inheritance
• Other resources

In many cases, the older you are (the longer you wait to use your resources), the more money you will have to work with in retirement. If you are low on funds, you might consider partial retirement while you work a part-time job.

Workers continue to report an expected median retirement age of 65, while retirees report they retired at a median age of 62. ³
—EBRI/Greenwald Research Retirement Confidence Survey

A retirement budget typically includes expenses such as housing, insurance, food, transportation, taxes, debt, travel, daily incidentals, gifts, and healthcare costs.

The balance of retirement resources is affected by things such as inflation, cost of living, unexpected expenses, and the legacy you want to leave.

For many retirees, Social Security is a starting place for retirement income. But benefits don’t have to be taken right away. Some people need to take them early, and some people need to wait so the benefits will be higher.

Those who will have pensions, investments, inheritance and other sources may be able to retire at an earlier age. To make that happen, it’s important to preserve the value of those investments.

No matter what the financial situation in retirement, many people look into holding tangible assets, such as gold IRAs, to preserve the value of savings.

A gold IRA offers tax benefits of an official retirement account PLUS market advantages of a physical asset — gold is uncorrelated with paper-based assets and may help offset losses from other investments.

Where does all of this leave you with your own retirement? Write down each potential scenario, and your most desirable retirement age will become clearer.

2. Timing milestones: What matter most in your situation?

Retirement age is often treated as if it was a fixed number, but real life is much more irregular, and that means retirement for some people spans a period of time.

In a 2025 EBRI/Greenwald survey, retirees reported a wide range of actual retirement ages, with the largest group retiring between ages 62 and 64.³

That broad spread of ages helps explain why there is no single “normal” retirement age.

Some ages are tied to specific rules. Age 62 is the earliest age many people can start Social Security retirement benefits. Age 65 is when Medicare becomes generally available for people age 65 or older.⁴ Full retirement age affects Social Security benefit calculations. Age 70 is when delayed Social Security increases stop and the benefit has risen as high as it can.¹ 

But the same milestone can mean different things to different people.

• For one person, Medicare eligibility may be the key issue because they need health coverage.
• For another, Social Security benefit payment timing may matter more.
• Someone else may care most about retiring while they still have the energy to travel, help family, volunteer, or enjoy hobbies.

A helpful question here is: Which milestone matters most in your own situation: income, healthcare, taxes, family timing, or something else?

3. Health: What does your health make possible, and what could it interrupt?

Health can pull the retirement decision in more than one direction.

The question is: What if your health changes before you expect it to?

CDC data for 2024 shows that life expectancy after age 65 in the United States was 19.7 more years for the total population, with 20.8 more years for females and 18.4 more years for males.⁵ 

There’s no way to know how many years you have left. But thinking this through as you consider your own health can help you decide whether you want to retire early and live to the fullest now while your health is good — or put off retirement so you can accumulate more retirement funds.

4. Work: Do you want to keep working, and can you realistically count on it?

Many people plan to work until a certain age. But life doesn’t always cooperate.

Younger colleagues may begin to take over the work, or the industry may make a big change that just requires too big a learning curve. Health may get in the way. Your spouse might retire early and want to travel with you. You might simply get burned out after decades of working.

The 2025 EBRI/Greenwald survey found that 40% of retirees retired earlier than planned.³ 

On the other hand, people who love their work may want to keep working as long as possible, because that’s more important to them than having healthy retirement years to travel and relax.

If you are someone who is determined to work as long as you can, ask yourself: Do I really want to keep working? Or is there something better to do with my remaining years?

If you are someone who would like to retire as early as possible, ask yourself: Can I sustain myself financially in retirement? Will my retirement plans be fulfilling enough?

There are multiple work reasons other than finances to keep working part time or full time:

• Company needs
• Completion of long-term projects you love
• Worries about social isolation
• Lack of structure expected in retirement
• Loss of identity once you retire

The reasons to keep working (or not) are as varied as the individuals who retire.

For some people, the answer may not be “work” or “no work.” It may be a gradual transition. Part-time work, consulting, seasonal work, or a lower-stress role may help bridge the space between full-time work and full retirement.

5. Life: What are you retiring to?

To make retirement as successful as possible, it’s important to visualize as you plan. What will retirement really look like for you?

Here’s a trick to make it real: Ask a very practical question: What would a satisfying Tuesday look like if I were retired?

Would you…

• Travel
• Volunteer
• Garden
• Golf
• Read
• Learn
• Create
• Help with grandchildren
• Support aging parents
• Spend more time in your faith community
• Finally clean out the garage
• Something else meaningful just to you

Relationships figure in, too. If your spouse, close friends, or family members are on a different timeline, retirement may begin to look different than you imagined.

If you’re retired but your social circle is still working, weekdays may feel maddeningly quiet.

If many people close to you are already retired, the transition may feel more natural.

The regret test uncovers your best retirement age

Before choosing a retirement age, try one final question:

What would make me regret retiring too soon, and what would make me regret retiring too late?

Retiring too soon might bring regret if you miss the income, routine, identity, or connection work provided.

Retiring too late might bring regret if you feel you gave up healthy years, delayed meaningful experiences, or missed time with people you love.

The answer will be different for everyone. The question is simply a way to look honestly at the trade-offs.

It’s important to visualize as you plan. What will retirement really look like for you?

In the end, the goal isn’t to find the perfect retirement age.

It’s to understand what means most to you and then choose a path and time that reflects your resources, your responsibilities, and the retirement life you dream of.