Retire Early? Work Forever? Both Are Wildly Unrealistic

Writing for Barron's, Sarah Green Carmichael interviewed Teresa Ghildarducci, the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in economic policy analysis in the economics department at the New School, and the author of How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is.

Regarding the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement, Ghildarducci said: 

"The person who says, 'I want to retire early,' should probably talk to a therapist, because behind that is probably an uncertainty about what they want to do with their life, or they don’t like their job. But just financially, it doesn’t make sense unless you’re very, very rich, and if you’re very, very rich, you probably have expensive taste. For most people to quit work for 40 or 50 years, it’s just not a plan that can be sustained for anybody, except for people on TV."

What about the people who say, “Oh, I’m never going to retire. I’m just going to work until I’m 90”?
"There’s two kinds of people who say that. There’s the rare pediatrician who loves their work and wants to see a couple of kids a couple of times a week until they’re 90. That’s rare; that’s why you see them in the newspaper"
"The second group are people who are engaged in what’s called cognitive dissonance. They know they don’t have enough money, and so they engage in another kind of fantasy, which is, 'I can work until I die. My employer will want me.' We find in our research that there’s a [level of] enormous age discrimination and that there are a lot of jobs that are so fast-paced in terms of technology skills required that an older worker will just not be able to keep up." There is also the physical requirements of some jobs that cannot be sustained into advanced age.

Research shows: "Most people will stop work before 65 and collect Social Security before 65."
"They were pushed out, or they were laid off, or they had to take care of their spouse or had to attend to their own illness. Most people do not retire when they want to. They retire earlier."

So what is a realistic goal and game plan for retirement planning?
"Here are some rules of thumb. If you’re 30, you should be out of debt, and you should have about half of your salary in the bank. By the time you’re 40, you should have a little more than your annual income in the bank sequestered for your retirement in either a 401(k) or an IRA. By the time you’re 45, you should have two times your annual salary. By the time you’re 50, you should have three.
By the time you’re 65 or so, 63, you should have about eight times your annual salary, if your annual salary is about what you want to live on...."

Read the interview at: https://www.barrons.com/articles/retire-early-or-work-forever-51556397683?shareToken=st1b1d6680257d4fb7ab3787524708bd0c&reflink=smartbrief