<p>"According to some new analysis from the nerds at Nerd Wallet, increased student loan debt (a result of soaring tuition costs) along with high levels of unemployment among recent graduates puts the current crop of younger adults at a disadvantage when it comes to retiring at a reasonable age." ...</p>
<p>Today?s</a> College Grads Can Expect To Retire When They Are 73 ? Consumerist</p>
<p>Depends how much parents leave them as a nest egg.</p>
<p>I think everyone should plan to have a second career as backup, incase they need it & just to stay engaged in life.
Afterall isn’t 50 the new 30?
So 73 is like 55.
Ive also seen more co-op housing multi age communities, retired folks providing child care for their grandchildren or neighbors. Lots of "retired"people are still working now, but in less demanding jobs than in their youth.</p>
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I work with seniors and I think that 73 is actually a reasonable age at which to retire. Barring bad luck and debilitating chronic diseases, people in their early 70s can expect to be (reasonably) energetic and as productive as they were in their mid-60s. </p>
<p>Of course you want to give yourself enough time to enjoy retirement before you’re dealing with the difficulties and limitations of true old age. But if you live to be 95 - and I think that’s a reasonable number to plan for - will you really be able to manage 30 years of living without an income? And the more services you need, the more expensive it gets.</p>
<p>My 81 year old Dad retired about 5 years ago. Physically and mentally he is years younger. Not sure if working kept him in better shape or if he was blessed with good health so he was able to work longer. </p>
<p>I am 56 and plan to work another 10 years.</p>
<p>Age 65 is an outdated number. Folks are living much longer on average now. So by the time current college kids reach 73, many will still be young enough to still be working.</p>
<p>I’m 60 and just went back to work. (I sure don’t want to wok till I’m 73 though!)</p>
<p>My Dad retired at about age 73. He worked because he loved it, not because he had to. Now he volunteers at various places almost as much as he worked. He has too much energy to retire completely.</p>
<p>My stepdad had a mandatory retirement age as he was a test pilot.</p>
<p>I think my DH and I will be working till we drop. So, no sympathies here. That anyone CAN work up to that age is a privilege, luxury and blessing.</p>
<p>^^^ Exactly what I was thinking! Having kids in my late 30s seemed like a good idea at the time.</p>
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<p>It’s not terribly outdated. Life expectancy when Social Security was implemented was 68. Now it’s 76. You’d think with the increases in productivity since we’d also be expanding the length of retirement instead of simply holding it constant.</p>
<p>I hope to retire at 55 or so. Another guy at work just died of brain cancer and I’m getting weary of hearing about people I know dropping dead when they really aren’t that old. But it doesn’t mean you just sit around doing nothing, afterwards.</p>
<p>Then again, I suppose the point of the article is that today’s graduates will be in debt forever.</p>
<p>By the time current students reach 73 aging will be cured (unless we blow ourselves up first).</p>
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<p>Small nit… The life expectancy at birth of all races was <62. Females was 63 and males was 59. Thus, when SS was created, “most” folks were not expected to live long enough to collect.</p>
<p>(That is one big actuarial reason that SS & Medicare have huge future deficits. The other being fewer workers/retiree.)</p>
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<p>Just like in the year 2000 we had solved all of the world’s problems and were driving around in hovercrafts?</p>
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<p>I know I had read that 68 somewhere before. Was that the White life expectancy only?</p>
<p>My former boss just came back for a visit. She’s now 78, retired at about a year and a half ago. She misses work. A lot. I don’t think age 73 is an unreasonable retirement age. I do, however, think there’s a difference between 73 becoming the normal retirement age if it is because people are living longer and better or if it is because people are so burdened with debt they can’t stop working.</p>
<p>Well, I’m with busdriver on this one. I’m 55 right now and I fully plan to retire at 60, tops. </p>
<p>Just because you don’t have a job doesn’t mean you don’t work. I would much rather be occupied doing valuable volunteer work than doing the soul-sucking job I have now!</p>
<p>I was fascinated to learn that the retirement age had originally been set an age past the average life expectancy.</p>
<p>(Of course, average life expectancy averages in infant mortality, so anyone who gets past that hurdle actually has higher average life expectancy than the overall average, but that’s a nitpick.)</p>
<p>That suggests that, at one time, the expectation was that you worked throughout your life. If you managed to live longer, then, maybe it was time for you to sit down and take a rest.</p>
<p>How that has been transformed into people having the expectation that they are entitled to decades of leisure, supported by pensions funded by the companies that once employed them, by the government that was only intending to provide a safety net to people who were so very, very, old that it wasn’t fair to expect them to keep working, discounts from merchants in recognition of their advanced age and “fixed income,” etc, is remarkable to me.</p>
<p>I mean, don’t get me wrong, now that there is a leisure class of people who get to spend their time as they please, I sure as heck want a chance to be a part of it, but when did society develop this expectation? Does it exist in every developed country? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense!</p>
<p>It really is logical to move the retirement age to some point around average life expectancy. (Although we do really need people to retire so younger people can get their jobs.)</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
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<p>How not? People could not afford to retire 100 years ago so they didn’t. Now people can afford to retire so they do? It’d be like saying that it’s ridiculous that so many people buy computers because back in the 1970s no one had computers.</p>
<p>They can “afford to retire” because we have a system that begins paying them for doing nothing.</p>
<p>Why is that a logical system?</p>
<p>Again, I am eagerly looking forward to being among the people who are paid (i.e., draw a pension and SS benefits) to do nothing except what I choose to do. But I am not sure why I, or anyone else, is entitled to spend 20 years or longer drawing a salary from my former employer and from the government, while not working.</p>