work longer

Should You Work Longer? Here’s How to Decide

June 16, 2021 By Kathryn Vercillo Leave a Comment

You could retire at an early age. In fact, that’s the dream for many people. However, you don’t have to. Should you work longer? Should you work even well after the traditional retirement age? There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Here are some things to think about to help you decide.

What Does It Mean To Work Longer?

Retirement means different things to different people these days. Maybe you really want a FIRE lifestyle. In other words, you want to continue to earn income but to be free of a workplace commitment. Alternatively, perhaps you plan to retire at a traditional age from a government or corporate job. However, you’re wondering should you work longer than age 62 or 65 or 67, which are the typical retirement ages. First, define what it really means to you when you decide to work longer.

Consider Quality of Life

Some people want to retire early so that they can fully enjoy their retirement years. They see retirement as freedom from the workplace grind. However, there are people who don’t do well after retirement. They actually find that they miss doing the work that they loved. Ask yourself honestly what you expect from retirement life. If you love your job then you might enjoy working longer even if you don’t need to do so financially. If you hate your job, then you might decide that leaving early is worth it.

Earn More for Longer

The biggest reason that you might decide to work longer is that you’ll continue to earn more money. Obviously, money does play a role in the quality of life. Once you retire, you have to live off of your retirement income. The longer you delay retirement, the more income you’ll have for those retirement years. First of all, you won’t be spending that retirement money. Second, you’ll earn more while you delay retirement. This can make a significant difference in the amount of money that you’ll have when you do retire. If your main goal is to have as much money as possible in retirement, then you should work longer if you can.

Better Social Security Options

You get much better social security if you wait to retire. In fact, for each year after the traditional retirement age until age 70, Social Security will add 8%. In other words, if you retire at 67, you get a certain amount of Social Security. In contrast, if you retired the following year, you’d get 8% more. Moreover, your spouse’s social security benefits may go up as high as 60% if you retire at 70 as compared to 62. Consider your Social Security benefits carefully when deciding if you should work longer.

Should You Work Longer Hours Instead of More Years?

Sometimes, when people ask themselves “should you work longer” they mean longer hours. In other words, should you put in more time now so that you can work fewer years in the long run? Obviously, it’s tempting to work long hours when you’re young. After all, you have the energy, perhaps you don’t have a family, yet. Therefore, you might want to add those hours up now to build that nest egg.

While there’s nothing wrong with that approach, there’s something you should know. Working longer hours typically doesn’t make you more productive. Moreover, you can easily burn out. Therefore, you want to make sure that you consider your work-life balance. Should you work longer now so you can have more time later? Perhaps, but only if you don’t harm yourself in the meantime with overwork.

Finally, Have a Plan B

After weighing all of your options, you might decide that you should work longer. You set your goals, and you’ll work towards those. However, make sure that you have a Plan B. Illness, family changes, and changes in the marketplace can all lead to unexpected early retirement. As a result, you want to have your goals as well as your backup plan. After all, if those goals don’t work out as planned, then you still want to retire safely and comfortably.

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Your Most Important Asset

June 7, 2011 By Jennifer Derrick 6 Comments

When I talk to people about assets and which ones are most important, I often hear about homes, 401k balances, collectibles, antiques, jewelry, secure jobs, and education. But no one ever mentions what I think is your most important asset: Your health. Think about it: Without good health you can’t work, or at best your working options will be limited by your health restrictions. If you can’t work, you’ll have to get by on the small income provided by Social Security, anything your family can provide, or whatever limited income you can produce.

When you are in poor health, all of your other traditional assets may go by the wayside. The home may have to be sold (either because you can’t make the payments or you can’t take care of it), your education becomes a moot point if you can’t get out of bed to go to work, the art, collectibles and jewelry may have to be sold, the great career will implode, and the retirement accounts may have to be liquidated to provide for your care. Good health is the cornerstone to acquiring and maintaining all of the other financial assets you’ll have in life.

Health also just about the only asset you can’t get back once it’s gone. You can replace a home, money, and things, but lost health is almost impossible to get back. You may be able to improve your health, put some diseases into remission, or have surgery to repair bones and tendons, but many conditions are irreversible. Even things that are “fixed” are often not the same as they were before they were broken. Repaired knees are never as strong as your natural knees. Beating cancer is great, but it can leave you vulnerable for other cancers or diseases. The best thing to do is to avoid losing your health for as long as you can.

Obviously some of your health is out of your control. Genetics play a big role and you can’t control certain accidents that aren’t your fault. Then there are the diseases that seem to strike people out of the blue. But for all that you can’t control about your health there is a great deal that you can control. Here are some ways to control your health and improve your chances of having your most important asset last a long time.

Eat right: You know this. Lots of fruits and veggies, reduce sugar and sodium intake, get lots of vitamins, limit portion size, and limit fats. Avoid foods that aggravate any conditions you may have. If you need help in this area, read lots of books on nutrition or hire a nutritionist. Fad diets aren’t the answer. You need a program of complete nutrition.

Go to the doctor: Get all of your routine screenings and don’t skip physicals. A condition caught early is more treatable than something left too long. You know your body. If something seems off, get it checked out.

Don’t neglect your mental/mind health: Keep your brain active to stave off Alzheimer’s disease. Tackle new challenges and keep learning. Don’t let mental illnesses like depression go untreated, either. Your brain is just as important as your body. One can’t help you without the other.

Exercise: You know this, too. You don’t have to run marathons, but you have to do something. Get your heart rate up, get in some resistance training, work on your balance and flexibility and add more activity to your day by taking the stairs, doing your own cleaning or yard work if you can, and walking more. Moving more will help prevent disease and stave off conditions like arthritis and age-related mobility problems.

Stop the bad habits: You know that smoking, drinking to excess, illegal drugs, and fast food addictions are terrible for you. Stop it. If you need professional help to break the addiction, get it.

Drink more water: Staying hydrated is important to your overall health. It improves digestion and keeps your organs functioning smoothly. Water is the best substance for your body. Tea, coffee, and soda taste great, but they don’t work as well as water when it comes to hydration. Limit your intake of other beverages and drink more water.

Control stress: Stress leads to heart attacks, mental health problems, and contributes to other diseases. Find the way that works for you to control it. It may be exercise, religious practice, meditation, griping with friends, or therapy. Whatever works, do it.

Try to avoid accidents/injuries: You can’t control the crazy driver in the next lane, but you can control your own actions. Don’t drink and drive (or text/use the cell phone), don’t speed, and don’t tailgate. Don’t tackle tasks around the home that you are not prepared for. Call in the professionals if you need something done like electrical work, tree removal, roof repair, or anything else that you don’t know how to do or that you can’t safely manage. Don’t run your body into the ground, either. Exercise is great but overdoing it to the point that you need double knee replacements and a hip replacement is asking for trouble. Moderation is key.

Take precautions when you can: Wear sunscreen and sunglasses to protect you against the sun’s harmful rays. Wear insect repellant when outdoors to keep from getting insect borne diseases. Wear proper safety equipment like helmets and eye protection when necessary. If something is available to you that will protect your health, use it.

Invest in your health: This one is important and some will think it goes against the spirit of Saving Advice. For all that we talk about saving money and cutting expenses, your health is the one area where economizing can cost you. Sure, you want to save money on your grocery bill but don’t do it at the expense of eating healthy food. Always make certain that you have health insurance or have saved enough money to pay out of pocket for proper care, and be prepared to spend the money. Waiting to get treatment because you don’t have the money or you don’t want to spend it can cost you. Although there are many ways to exercise for free or on the cheap, if you know you’ll only be motivated by a gym membership or personal trainer, spend the money. Get professional mental health help if you can’t break an addiction or deal with a mental illness on your own. What you spend on your health will pay for itself far into the future. You don’t want to look back from your hospital bed and say, “Boy, I sure saved a lot by eating fast food all the time and skipping those doctors visits.”

Don’t wait until you’re sick to think about the value of your health. Make the move to better health now. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to get healthy (and some things can’t be reversed). Your health is your most important asset because all of your other assets are dependent upon it. Treat it accordingly.

What Happens If I Can’t Retire?

September 9, 2009 By Jennifer Derrick 9 Comments

In financial circles the big push is to get people to save enough money so that they can retire in comfort. That’s a noble goal, but the fact is that more and more people aren’t going to be able to retire, at least not in the way that they dream about. Pensions are a thing of the past, Social Security is iffy at best, and many people simply haven’t saved enough to cover both ridiculous health care expenses and a life of leisure.

We all dream of the life of leisure, the daily golf game, and the fantastic trips, but reality is likely to be somewhat different than our dreams because the money just won’t be there. Nobody wants to talk about what happens at that point. So what happens if you arrive at your retirement age, or you get close, and you discover that you don’t have enough? What can you do, beyond saving as much as possible?

The most obvious answer is to work longer. Putting off retirement for even a couple of years gives you a chance to save even more money. You don’t have to work at your current 9 to 5 job, either. Maybe you take this opportunity to start your own business or take a job in a field you always wanted to try. If you have to keep working, no one says that it has to be in a job you hate. In fact, continuing to work well past retirement age, even if only part time, not only allows you to save more money, it may save your sanity. We all think we want to quit working but a lot of retirees, after living the life of leisure for a couple of months, find that they are bored and that they miss making a contribution somewhere. They miss the socialization, too. If you can find work that you love, you may find that you prefer to keep working.

The other thing you can do is to adjust your expectations for your retirement. In other words, get real with yourself. If you know you don’t have a lot of money, don’t delude yourself. Don’t retire and then go on a binge of trips and leisure activities and drain your resources within the first five years of retirement. Adjust your expectations downward. Realize that you can’t take five luxury trips a year and be happy with one budget trip. Realize that you may have to work and find a way to be okay with that. Accept that you may have to sell the big house and move to a condo. Don’t dwell on what cannot be or waste your remaining time asking “what if.” Get out there and do what you can, but be realistic about it and accept that maybe you have to reduce your expectations a bit.

Retiring into a life of leisure is a fairly recent concept. Our grandparents worked until their health failed and they had no choice but to stop. Maybe they scaled back on their hours, but they still worked. The idea of simply sitting around and doing nothing or traveling full time is a new idea (made possible by a marketing machine that wants to push seniors into all kinds of activities) and it’s an idea that simply may not be possible or even advisable. We live longer now and if you retire at sixty-five, your money may very well have to last thirty years. Unless you have a lot of money, the retirement ideal that is pushed by the marketers is a distant dream. Thanks to rising health care costs, even with the best savings habits in the world you may still not have enough to support yourself without working at all for the remaining years of your life. And if you can? Great, but keeping yourself active and involved in something is likely to keep you healthy and mentally strong much longer than doing nothing but playing golf all day.

The better answer may be to gradually phase working out of your life. Maybe at sixty-five you trade in the 9 to 5 desk job for a job in a museum or something else that you really enjoy. Or you piece together a couple of part time jobs. Then at seventy you scale back to part time hours. At seventy-five, maybe your income comes from a hobby that you can pursue at home and turn into a little cash. Maybe you work at that until your health prevents you from working at all. You can still have some of the joys of retirement on such a plan because you’re working a “job,” no longer chasing a “career” that sucks up all of your time. You can travel and spend time with the grandkids, but still have some money coming in on the side while keeping yourself engaged in society.

Certainly you should strive to save as much as you can during your prime earning years. Whatever your “retirement” consists of, you can bet that big health care expenses are going to be part of it and you’ll want enough money to take care of yourself without subjecting yourself to government assistance. But if you end up having to work a little longer than you hope or you end up with a smaller retirement budget than you dream of, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. There are positives to a “retirement” that still includes work.