Only 14% Retire as Planned

How many people retire at the age they had planned? An analysis of the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study (HRS) has the answer. The HRS is a longitudinal survey of Americans aged 50 or older, allowing researchers to track individuals over time. The Employee Benefit Research Institute used the HRS data to compare the expected and actual retirement age of individual workers. The findings were surprising. 

"Before age 62, actual retirement is higher than expected retirement," says EBRI researcher Sudipto Banerjee. But by age 65 the opposite is the case. "Eighty-one percent of workers expected to retire before age 65, but only 64.1 percent actually did so," Banerjee says. Overall, 38 percent of older workers retired before the age they had planned and a larger 48 percent retired after the age they had planned. Only 14 percent retired as planned. 

Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute, The Gap Between Expected and Actual Retirement: Evidence from Longitudinal Data, Notes, November 2014