I feel like retiring at 60 - 65 is too old

CreditCardChris

I'm sorry if this comes across as insensitive to our older community members but I'm 31 and absolutely hate the thought of retiring at 60+. Assuming I even live to 60, it feels like it's kinda too late to start enjoying your freedom? Your health deteriorates exponentially as you get older, I mean I still feel as young and healthy as I did when I was 18 but I'm sure when I'm 60 I'll start feeling it. Then 70+ is around the age when I feel like retirement is more about surviving than living. 

So if you retire at 60, you've probably got 10 good years but then after that you kinda just become a couch grandpa / grandma. I'm hoping to save like a beast and retire at 50 but since I only just started investing that probably isn't going to happen. 

I see actors on tv shows and I google their age and they're like 65 or 70 in some cases and they look fit as a fiddle but then I walk down my high street and I see people who look about 60 year old walking with frames, or straight up dying from cancer or some other illness... Like my mother did.

I just feel like working for 47 years to have 10 - 15 years of freedom (real freedom not couch retirement) just isn't a decent trade off.

hugheskevi

CreditCardChris said:

I'm sorry if this comes across as insensitive to our older community members but I'm 31 and absolutely hate the thought of retiring at 60+. Assuming I even live to 60, it feels like it's kinda too late to start enjoying your freedom? Your health deteriorates exponentially as you get older, I mean I still feel as young and healthy as I did when I was 18 but I'm sure when I'm 60 I'll start feeling it. Then 70+ is around the age when I feel like retirement is more about surviving than living.

At 31 you are still very close to your prime, from about the age of 40 you are likely to notice a decline in maximum physical performance and start to struggle with things like matching your output under hard physical performance (eg running races) that in your 20s would have been easy. I recall running a 5,000m time at age 41 after lots of regular structured training which was about 20 seconds slower than what I ran at age 21 with minimal ad-hoc training.

So if you retire at 60, you've probably got 10 good years but then after that you kinda just become a couch grandpa / grandma.

You should reach 70 without any limiting long-standing illnesses if you remain fit and active. By about the age of 80 you may well have a limiting long-standing issue. By about the age of 90 you would be happy to still be active with no serious issues.

I'm hoping to save like a beast and retire at 50 but since I only just started investing that probably isn't going to happen.

Providing for years prior to minimum pension age (55 or 58, depending on future legislation) is far more difficult, as there is not the tax break offered by a pension. Plus, you have fewer working years to provide for more inactive years. So it gets increasingly difficult to retire significantly early, and in practice when you get to the target age the increase in future income from working one more year is extremely high if you have planned to retire very young so there is a strong temptation for 'one more year'.

I see actors on tv shows and I google their age and they're like 65 or 70 in some cases and they look fit as a fiddle but then I walk down my high street and I see people who look about 60 year old walking with frames, or straight up dying from cancer or some other illness... Like my mother did.

Healthy diet and regular exercise works wonders, especially when combined with a low-stress lifestyle, plenty of sleep, etc. Sadly the majority of people choose not to live in this way. Whilst there are no guarantees, you can significantly improve your odds.

I just feel like working for 47 years to have 10 - 15 years of freedom (real freedom not couch retirement) just isn't a decent trade off.

I agree wholeheartedly. But there are also different ways of achieving this. You can always choose to shift around retirement, eg, take a few years out to travel when young, take career breaks, etc. Part-time working will also work for some.

Ensuring you have a job you like, or at the very least do not dislike, is important for mental well-being.

There are also trade-offs between things like having children, a bigger house, a bigger car, etc, which for some will be more important than retiring early.

For many, 'lifestyle drift' means they consume more as their income rises throughout life, and it doesn't matter what you earn if you spend it all Very few can stick to a plan of sacrificing current lifestyle for an extended period (relative to what they could spend) in return for a very long-term gain of early retirement. 

Brynsam

31...and with a great deal to learn!

burner03

agreed. Old people are the worst! /shakes fist 

Thrugelmir

Enjoy life. The years pass soon enough. You only get the one chance........

silverwhistle

Well, I'm 65 and still play 11 a side women's football. Admittedly not for 90 minutes, but I always sprint off when I'm substituted just to show the manager I've got it left in my legs!:-)  I signed off with a goal in our last game before lock down and really looking forward to re-starting training - I want to be playing when I reach official state pension age at the end of next season.

Keeping fit, luck, desire and having fun have a lot to do with how you experience age. It has to be admitted I'm a bit creaky on Mondays after our Sunday games, and the sciatica in my left leg is getting slightly more noticeable, but endorphins overcome that during training and the games.:-)

AnotherJoe

Well, if you want to do something about it OP, check out the FIRE movement if yiyve nit heard of it. 

Two Blogs / websites I'd recommend, The Escape Artist and Mr Money Mustache. Brit and Canadian (in USA) respectively.  So slightly different approaches. MMM's a bit hard core for me, but some good stuff all the same. 

barnstar2077

I know it is hard, but try not to be down about it.  You have plenty of time to come up with a plan.  Read up on pensions and investments and be thankful that you didn't wake up one morning in your late fifties and realise you should have done something sooner.  But as others have said, don't forget to live a little now too!  

cfw1994

CreditCardChris said:

(a bit of a rant)

Did you have a question for anyone here?
Only there are a bunch of helpful smart people here to ask....
Your life is in your hands.  Be super frugal if you want....earn lots, spend little, you can retire in 10 years.   

Enjoy life along the way though: so far as we know, we only get one chance!  

CreditCardChris

cfw1994 said:

CreditCardChris said:

(a bit of a rant)

Did you have a question for anyone here?
Only there are a bunch of helpful smart people here to ask....
Your life is in your hands.  Be super frugal if you want....earn lots, spend little, you can retire in 10 years.   

Enjoy life along the way though: so far as we know, we only get one chance!  

Not really a question, just voicing my thoughts with the hopes of receiving some feedback from the elder folks here. 

And as far as enjoying life, for me enjoying life is waking up every morning whatever time I feel like, not having to answer to anyone, going for drives in the sunny weather, hitting the gym, going on hiking holidays, playing video games for hours on end etc.

Kinda hard to enjoy life properly when you have work 6 days a week.

VXman

Well, I'm 58 and I kind of agree. I'm retiring in 2 weeks time. Yes, I'm not as fit and healthy as I was even 7 years ago but I'm still pretty good and looking forward to and active and hopefully long retirement.

I suppose it depends on how much you enjoy your work if you can stick it out to 60-65. I have friends still working in their 70's just because they want to! If you want to retire early you will need to start to do something serious about it now. (Unless you are earning well in the hundreds of thousands, and of course a lot depends on the lifestyle you want when you retire.)

31 is young and  60 at that point can seem a long way off. I certainly remember feeling that way at points when I was younger. You need to enjoy the now!

Another possibility is to do something interesting with your work. Me and my wife love to travel so a few years ago we moved to the far east to work and combined a well paid job with being able to try a new life out over here and travel this side of the world. It helped us extend our working life a few years beyond what we might have wanted to in the UK. Also bumped our pension pot considerably enabling us to now retire with enough money to continue to enjoy travelling and other hobbies.