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The Benefits of Delaying Retirement

Trying to decide when to retire? Make sure you consider the financial ramifications in your decision

If you ask my wife, she will tell you that I am not a patient person. "Patience is a virtue," she reminds me time and time again. And, while I have always struggled with being patient, I have to admit that when it comes to retirement, patience is not just a virtue – it can have a significant financial impact on your retirement standard of living. For some people, delaying retirement is a positive thing. Many people enjoy their careers and do not want to retire at the traditional age of 65. Others can't imagine retiring with nothing to do but play golf every day. Some started investing late in life and are not sure they can afford to retire at 65. Regardless of your situation, you will want to consider the financial implications of the timing of your retirement.

A recent study titled, "The Power of Working Longer" concluded that delaying your retirement by one year can increase your sustainable retirement income by as much as 15%. Here are the three key ways this one-year delay impacts your income level in retirement:

  1. Your Social Security monthly benefit will increase. If you choose to retire early and take your benefits at age 62, your monthly benefit will be reduced by about 30% compared to your "full retirement age" benefit. By delaying your retirement and withdrawal of Social Security benefits by just one year, your monthly benefit will increase by 8% on top of inflation. If you delay withdrawing your benefits until age 70, you will receive about 124% of your "full retirement age" benefit.
  2. Your investment portfolio will continue to grow and compound as you continue to contribute to it for an extra year. According to the study, this adds about 4% to your sustainable retirement income.
  3. Finally, your savings grow even more as you delay taking withdrawals for an extra year, adding approximately another 3%.
There are some real benefits to waiting even one year to retire. From a financial standpoint, it can improve your retirement standard of living significantly. Maybe patience is a virtue – just don't tell my wife I said that.

Matt Haertzen

Matt Haertzen

References:

"The Power of Working Longer" by Gila Bronshtein, Jason Scott, John B. Shoven, and Sita N. Slalov, October 2017

Social Security Benefits Planner

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