Marketing the Old Age Myth
Ageism Around the World

There's Nothing "Normal" About Your Retirement Age

Musings Directory-1334441_1920According to the Social Security Administration, the"Normal Retirement Age" has a great deal of meaning:

Retirement before "Normal Retirement Age" (NRA) reduces benefits, and retirement after NRA increases benefits. NRA, also referred to as "Full Retirement Age," varies from age 65 to age 67 by year of birth.

This is a table of the Normal Retirement Ages from the year of birth 1937 through 1960 and later: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/nra.html As you can see, since birth year 1943, the NRA is considered to be at least 66 years of age. If you were born in 1960 or later, your NRA is 67.

Please visit https://www.ssa.gov for complete information about the monthly benefit you would receive at Normal Retirement Age, how waiting until age 70 will increase your monthly benefit, and details about continuing to work while collecting Social Security benefits. You can set up a personal Social Security account online and get the details customized for you. These specifics are not what this blog post is about.

What I really want to discuss here is the notion that there is nothing "normal" about a Boomer's retirement age. I know Boomers who are in their late 50s or early 60s who consider themselves "retired" because they have left the traditional workforce. However, when you dig a bit deeper, many of these retired Boomers are not fully retired at all. They still work, they just do so in a different and sometimes very creative way. Some of them work part-time, some do freelance gigs, some consult. Few of these retirees are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. I also know Boomers who continue to work full-time well past their "normal" retirement age and hope to do so for many more years -- as long as their employers see it that way too.

According to the Social Security Administration, "More than one in three 65 year olds today will live to age 90, and more than one in seven will live to age 95." Read that again and fully digest the implications. If you are 65, you have a better than 30 percent chance of living another 25 years. That makes it even more absurd to think of the "normal retirement age" as 66!

As I've discussed in previous blog posts, Boomers have dramatically redefined retirement to the point that the word itself is obsolete. It is hard to imagine more than a handful of Boomers who view "retirement" in the traditional sense. Our parents thought of retirement at age 65 as a time when you fulfilled your life's work and then stopped working, period. The assumption was that you had a fairly limited time left after the age of 65. Whatever years remained were presumably spent enjoying the fruits of your labor -- maybe collecting a pension as well as Social Security.

Many Boomers are blowing right past age 65 and not even giving it a second thought. Yes, we may have a bit less energy and feel kind of stiff getting out of bed in the morning... but that isn't enough to slow most of us down.

"Normal" retirement age??? I don't think so!

HappilyRewired.com is a Top 75 Baby Boomer Blog.

Image: Pixabay.com

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