A financial study cited by CNN says that many Americans should plan on working until age 80 in order to afford their retirement. “Because of the growing gap between actual savings and savings goals, many Americans are scrapping the idea of a concrete retirement age altogether and are instead working as long as it takes in order to save up enough to live comfortably in retirement.” Some said that working into the later years was psychologically rewarding.
On the bright side, a lot of people are actually choosing to work longer, the survey showed. About 45% of Americans between 25 and 39 and a quarter of people ages 40 to 59 say they will work in retirement because they want to (though 42% of Americans say they will work in a position that requires “less responsibility.”)
And some people may even work well past 80 years old. Robyn Sekula, from New Albany, Ind., is 40 years old and hopes to work for the rest of her life at her job as a media consultant.
“I don’t know that I will ever want to retire, unless my health dictates that I must,” said Sekula. “I love what I do.”
Who cares about the pipe and slippers when there’s another day at the office to look forward to? But besides making a virtue out of a necessity the harsh reality is that there isn’t enough money for most people to retire on. Social Security is broke. The Congressional Budget Office examined the different ways in which the problem could be fixed and came up with five basic options.
- Increases in the Social Security payroll tax,
- Reductions in people’s initial benefits,
- Increases in benefits for low earners,
- Increases in the full retirement age, and
- Reductions in the cost-of-living adjustments that are applied to continuing benefits
Well here’s another solution to the retirement age problem from the days of ancient Rome.
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