CFP outlines the additional tax and health costs of working past age 60.
He doesn’t mention it, but if you’re a max-FICA wage earner from your mid to late 20’s, you’ll reach the 2nd bend point of the AIME calculation by age 45 or so. There you’ll get 77% of the maximum monthly Social Security check, while paying about 1/2 the lifetime FICA taxes.
intercst
Hmmmm…
Not sure I buy all of his reasoning. The social connection, the routine, the sense of purpose/identity, etc… can all be beneficial to mental and physical health for working beyond age 60. The brain challenge can be well worth it as well.
The Stanford Center for Longevity did some interesting academic research on the power of working longer that is also compelling for many of us: The Power of Working Longer - Stanford Center on Longevity
I don’t know. I’ve been retired for 30+ years. Quit my job as an engineer in the oil & gas industry way back in 1994 at age 38 once I’d accumulated enough capital to live off the 4% rule. I wake up every day and just do whatever happens to 100% interest me at the time. I’m pretty sure the decision has greatly improved my longevity.
Back when I was working, I usually had 5 or 6 things I’d rather be doing than sitting in an office (even if two of them was to “get more sleep” and “watch more TV”.)
I’d have difficulty completing a time sheet to account for the past 30 years, other than to say it’s been completely awesome.
intercst
These were probably the same people who were telling me I’d be rewarded for working all that uncompensated overtime.
When I did the ROI on that, I found that merely capturing the average 10% return of an index fund, beat wage & salary work by a mile.
intercst
I agree that it is good for a person to remain engaged in something. Keep the mind busy. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be work. It could be travel (which ticks most of the points mentioned, e.g. social connections, physical/mental, etc). Volunteering for something important to you.
Stress and unhappiness work against physical, and especially mental, health.
Taylor’s focus in the video on “life in your 60’s” being filled with “grandchildren, travel, and hiking in state parks” as his premise or theme of why one would not want to work too long because you might have regrets later on just seemed odd to us. We travel, hike, bike, ski, socialize, etc.. in our 60’s. (have no grandchildren as of yet) all while being employed - at least for the first half of our 60’s.
Agree that financially, the additional accumulation doesn’t move the needle much. On the other hand, filling the gap years that includes health insurance, not relying on the portfolio, still enjoying work, getting plenty of travel/hiking/biking/socializing in while working in our early to mid 60’s doesn’t seem to be something we are going to have regrets over a few years from now when we look back on it all.
There are plenty of articles, books, opinions, blogs, etc. out there that focus on the opposite side of the discussion that Taylor is presenting.
BB
I think the issue is that for the vast majority of Americans who get a small finite amount of time away from work (that they don’t necessarily get to determine when it happens), doing any of the above can only come in snippets and not as a major lifestyle. Many of those activities are limited based on geographic location so it can be difficult to do them while still being employed full time.
I think of my inlaws, retired teachers, who now travel 4-5x as much as they did when they were employed and most of that travel is now during times where it simply was not possible to travel (school year).
I am married to a teacher so I face the same travel restrictions. We would love to go whale watching (and dive with whale sharks) but we cannot travel during the time of the year when either are most likely to be seen.
Admit that our careers (opera singer and later college professor while wife was on the academic calendar) involved plenty of time off for at least 30+ years (summers, semester breaks, spring breaks, etc.), so our life was very front end loaded with travel. Plus my singing career involved a lot of travel, both domestic and international. We still average about two large trips per year (one international, one domestic), but the travel bug is certainly no longer our “itch” any more. I admit it sure is for others.
Although Taylor’s video was somewhat compelling, it’s very individual based on a lot of factors. Hence my posts and response to it.
BB
Sure - 1% to 2% of the workforce has jobs they’d do for free. The rest of us are working because we have to, and when we accumulate enough, we’re quitting.
intercst
Growing trend is already in place for Boomers working longer. It includes plenty of us who actually like working. 
Why More Boomers Are Choosing to Work Past 65 (And Loving It)
Retirement, interrupted: Why those over 55 are a fast-growing segment of the workforce
boomers at work: still shaping the job market in the mid 2020s.
Ran into a guy at Lowes that was 66 and still working. Just had a child. I told him congratulations and really was amazed how young he was. More power to him.
More power to him!
I guess we will all have to wait and see if Bellichick - at age 73 and starting a new job coaching at UNC - follows suit with his 24 year old “girlfriend”. 
BB
Another article today about how Boomers are refusing to retire:
What’s that saying….
Only boring people have boring retirements…… 
I can’t wait for leisure time, even without having identified a “purpose” in a few years…..
The only thing holding me back from retiring today is the lifetime health insurance from my employer if I stay until 50…..
That would be worth waiting for. Especially since we don’t know the ultimate fate of the ACA. There are enough Republicans coming out in favor of extended tax credits that I’m sure the others wouldn’t have enough votes to kill the program anytime soon. But they probably won’t have enough votes to improve it, either.
I won’t speak for him, but I do know that intercst retired before there was an ACA. Somehow he managed to handle the medical until recently turning 65.
Prior to ACA, there were ways to stay insured without a job, but they tended to either be Medicaid (means tested) or unforgiving. You generally needed to maintain “continuous coverage” or else your pre-existing conditions would not be covered.
If you were on an individual plan and started to look ongoing expensive to your insurance carrier, there wasn’t all that much you could do about it, other than pay up for continuing coverage or pay up for the care directly.
That said, there also used to be associations that offered members health insurance. For awhile, I could have bought health insurance through IEEE, for example. In addition, my state offered an “insurance of last resort” program for people who didn’t qualify for Medicaid but whose former employer coverage & related COBRA benefits were running out and couldn’t get coverage elsewhere. It wasn’t cheap, but it was (probably) better than paying full price for whatever medical condition was making you otherwise uninsurable.
Regards,
-Chuck
Yes. I bought insurance through a Professional Engineering Association up through about age 50 (I retired at age 38). Once I understood that there is a large difference in the quality of insurance regulation from state to state, I found that I could buy health insurance in Washington State at a 60% discount to what I was paying in Texas. (–and note, I was diagnosed with an expensive autoimmune disease at age 44 in 1999 (lupus nephritis) and had a $10,000/year prescription drug bill at the time.)
To update that 2017 article – the last 2 years I was on Obamacare before I turned age 65 in 2021, I was paying $1.42/month for a Bronze Plan (i.e., less than $20/year.) In early 2021, I got a check for $632 from my Obamacare insurer (Molina) because they had failed to spend the required 80% of premiums collected on actual medical care for their customers over the previous two years.
The level of corruption in health insurance is off the charts! {{ LOL }}
intercst