Retirement Preparedness: Don’t Work Until You are 70

April 04, 2011

I read an article today titled, How to Collect Social Security and Still Keep Working?,  and found myself yelling at the computer screen in a rant similar to what I have seen my husband perform during sporting events when his team is losing.  It is out of character for me but this article got me going.  The article gives details of how much you can earn at 62 and still collect your social security and goes on to explain how income from working affects your income after you hit your full social security age (for me that is 67)  but the whole premise to me is backwards.  We CAN collect Social Security and still keep working if we time it correctly and we don’t make too much money if we are under our “full” retirement age.  But seriously, do we really want to?

Why can’t we collect Social Security and stop working?  Why can’t we retire when we retire?  Isn’t that what retirement is all about?  It seems like today there is a new assumption that everyone will work until they are 70 years old.  Is that what we want?

My question is, ”Why all the talk about working in retirement?”

Here are some things you can do now so work can be a choice not a default  strategy:

  1. Plan to have your house paid off in retirement to lower your housing cost. Pay an extra payment a year  to principal or make extra principal payments monthly to pay off the loan.
  2. Save more. Maximize your contributions to your 401(k), invest in a Roth IRA and if you don’t qualify for that, start a systematic investment into a brokerage account outside of retirement plans.
  3. Pay off credit card debt or consumer debt and invest the difference.
  4. Save for special events such as vacations so you don’t use credit cards to do it.
  5. Make it a game to live below your means using sites such as Groupon to save on entertainment, Southern Savers.com to save on groceries and household items.  Invest the difference for retirement.
  6. Fix your car instead of buying a new one.
  7. Maximize your employee benefits using a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA) to lower your out of pocket medical costs.

There are so many things we can do now to improve our finances and all of them make a difference, taken together could make the difference between retiring and enjoying the best years of your life or facing the thought of endless Monday mornings where you have to go to work when you really don’t want to.  I think about every financial choice I make now and I want to make them positive.   I am not buying into the keep working forever premise and you don’t have to either.