8/18/2015 – Retiring Early, Retiring Late, Retiring Penniless (Next Avenue)

After reviewing data from the government’s Health and Retirement Study from 1992 to 2012, Alicia Munnell, Geoffrey Sanzenbacher and Matthew Rutledgefound that three “shocks” are the top reasons for unexpected early retirement: worker’s health, involuntary job losses and changes within the person’s family (especially his or her spouse’s retirement).

In other words, it’s usually not because they have, or anticipate having, more money than they thought they would or because of the spouse’s health.

“When people are making plans [about when they’ll retire], they don’t do a good job projecting how they’ll be feeling at a later age,” Sanzenbacher, a research economist, told me. “They underestimate how much their health will deteriorate.”

Read the full article in Next Avenue.