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Retirement Age and Life Expectancy

Ujwal Deshmukh
Retirement age and life expectancy are related to each other, but how? Here's a post that explains you retirement age, life expectancy and the correlation between them.
Retirement can be described as a long sigh of relief from the routine stress, huge workload and long hours of traveling! and retirement age is the age when you free yourself from work and follow your heart for the rest of your life!
People that have given a thought to life after retirement by planning their monetary resources, generally retire early and reap the benefits of early retirement. However, not everyone is that good at retirement planning and also not that fortunate to retire in the late 40s or early 50s and lead a peaceful life ahead!
In fact, most of the people on earth have to work for a long time, probably even in their early 60s and earn a living for their families. Needless to say, working for such a long time affects their health up to a large extent and therefore influences their life expectancy.
Now, what is life expectancy? Life expectancy is defined as the average age that a group of newborn people would reach, if they are subjected to the age specific death rates in a particular year.
Americans had a big reason to rejoice, as according to some vital statistics, the average life expectancy in America rose up to around 77.6 years! This is certainly a bigger figure, compared to the previous decades.
Although the average American life expectancy has increased, there had been many people who died off early, as they had worked for a longer time in their life. This therefore gives a hint that retirement and life expectancy have a correlation, but what exactly is it? Here's an elaborated explanation of the same.

Correlation Between the Two

Retirement age and life expectancy are correlated in the sense that life expectancy is inversely proportional to the retirement age. It means that longer you work and the longer you handle work related stress in your life, the less are your chances of survival after retirement.
Towards the positive side, we can say that the earlier you retire, the more you live! This is not a hypothetical assumption. Rather, it is supported by detailed study of this subject and also observations from the past.
Generally, it is found that people retiring early live more, but how long do they live? Or what is the average number of years they live after retirement? Well, now 49-50 is usually not considered to be a retirement age in most countries.
However, if a person plans everything well and retires at the age of 50, he is expected to live for at least another 35-36 years, which increases the life span to almost 85-86 years! People retiring in their early 50s, normally live up to their late 70s or early 80s and people retiring at their early 60s, live till their early or mid 70s.
It should be noted that the aforementioned are just rough figures and there are many factors that influence your life span. Some of these factors include good health and eating habits, refraining from addictions such as alcohol and smoking, positive attitude and most importantly, a disciplined lifestyle.

Tips for Early Retirement

Now when I've spoken a lot on retirement age, life expectancy rise, etc., you must be looking out for some tips that would guide you to retire early and enjoy a stress free life ahead! Read on for some tips on early retirement.
Financial planning is the foremost tip if you desire to retire early. Plan your finances in such a way that you'll never fall short of money and you could enjoy all those things, which you couldn't in your youth!
  • Retirement is less work and more rest. Therefore there are chances that you might feel unhealthy and probably fall prey to diseases after retirement, as you are left with no exercises and work. So to lead a healthy retired life, eat healthy, stay away from alcoholism and smoking in young years and remain fit for your entire life span.
  • Retirement does not mean the end of work! It is rather the time for you to enjoy your hobbies and probably start some small scale business (if you wish!) related to your interest area. This would keep you active and might also add to your life span.
Many experts have established contradictions for early retirement age vs life expectancy increase and claimed that fine health and positive attitude are only factors contributing towards a long life, immaterial of your retirement age.
However, let us club our discussion with these two factors and come up to a sensible conclusion of retiring at an appropriate age with proper planning.