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September 01, 2009 at 08:00 PM
From the September 2009 Issue of Senior Market Advisor Magazine
All right, we get it already! Battered by the recession and decline in their savings, many boomers have concluded that they may need to work longer and retire later than they once thought. That used to be news but it isn’t anymore. So, it’s tempting just to ignore the latest finding of the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project that boomers are saying they may delay their retirement.
In surveys we’ve conducted, boomers tell us they want to work longer for one of three reasons. First, they expect to live to age 85 or 90 and quitting at 65 will result in boredom. Second, they enjoy work and it provides them a strong self-identity. Or third, they haven’t saved and cannot afford to stop earning a regular income.
On the verge of retirement
Pew hones in on what it calls the “threshold generation” of Americans 50 to 64 that is closest to retirement (comprising most of the boomer generation, which spans the ages from 45 to 63 this year). Fifty-two percent of full-time workers in this group say they “have thought in the past year about postponing their eventual retirement,” compared to 37 percent of adults of all ages.
Some 16 percent say they plan to never retire, twice the percentage of younger workers. We’ve seen other studies reporting that 25 percent of all boomers said they planned to work until they die.
