When asked, when is the best time to retire, do you answer with an age somewhere from 61 to 65? If you do then you are part of a majority of Americans according to a Bankrate.com survey and you most likely answered WRONG. There is no ideal age to retire. The correct answer is when you can afford to retire. When I pose the question as the “best time” to retire and the first thing that comes to someone’s mind is an age, then I suspect there’s a lack of a real retirement plan or one of confidence to back up that “age” answer. It’s just a birthday based retirement hope plan.

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Why Age Comes To Mind, Even When There’s No Ideal Age To Retire

When conversation turns to retirement and I ask people when they plan to retire and they answer with “in “X” amount of years” it’s easy to believe they have an actual retirement plan of some kind. But most of the time I get the “age” answer somewhere between age 62 and 70. People get hung up on age based retirement goals with little thought as to exactly why. Some understand their finances enough to know the money details of why they answered with an age, but unfortunately many who haven’t thought about or haven’t done any kind of retirement planning replies with an age that just sounds like an ideal age to retire.

Dig deeper and it comes down to a psychological association to Social Security and Medicare eligibility along with a pinch of retirement tradition. Then it’s whipped up into hope, whether there is any financial basis to back it up or not.

When I tell these folks I retired at the age of 51 it gets their attention and starts their retirement wheels turning. There’s usually a puzzled look followed with- How? That’s when things get interesting. I get to explain that we do have some power to retire without solely relying on traditional retirement birthday milestones and just hoping for the best. It’s about reaching our ideal time to retire. That has less to do with our age and everything to do with our personal finances.

Forget About An Ideal Age To Retire, Decide To Set Your Ideal Time To Retire

Certainly there are a lot of people with a lifetime of low wages, inconsistent employment availability, or have experienced other financially catastrophic situations during their lives. They are unable to save or adjust their lifestyle enough to escape waiting until their Social Security age requirements to have any kind of retirement. But that isn’t about being your ideal age to retire. It’s still a matter of your ideal time to retire because of your financial situation. However, you won’t know that or have any idea what’s ahead if you don’t get your head in your own game.

When would you want to retire?

As time goes on, shifting our retirement milestone mindset away from age and instead toward our finances may give us a better chance to bring retirement more in alignment with when and how we want to retire. Too many default age based retirements find out at the last-minute that they still can’t afford to retire. Hitting the age to begin Social Security and Medicare isn’t a guaranteed fully funded retirement. There are things that everyone should do to shake themselves free from the ideal age to retire thinking and just hoping it works out.

Set Your Own Financial Retirement Goals

There are a lot of opinions about retirement out there. Take in the abundance of broad stroke financial advice as valuable guidance, not hard rules to conform to. Most of it borders on the minimum to be done. The system is designed to cover the masses without regard to individual initiative to break free from employment and consumer conformity. It’s geared toward traditional old-age retirements. Strive to beat it when you can.

Social Security and Medicare –

Social Security will play a major retirement role for most of us. There’s a lot of talk about delaying retirement until age 70 when we can get our maximum Social Security benefit. Others say to take Social Security as soon as we can. People can weigh the pros and cons of starting it early at age 62 through waiting until age 70. However, those are financial considerations about how it plays into our financial and even our retirement lifestyle goals. Something that even people who retired early, long before being Social Security and Medicare eligible, calculates into future retirement funding plans.

Separate the Social Security and Medicare age requirements from when you see as your ideal time to retire. Make a cognitive decision as to how much they will play in calculating your ideal retirement time.

Age is just part of our financial calculations, like when it’s best to start taking Social Security benefits to reduce reliance on our savings or lack thereof, vs. longevity calculations. There’s also the impact Medicare will have on the budget and future funding needs.

Take control of your future –

It’s done by shedding debt and creating a happy and sustainable budget-friendly lifestyle. Then purposely saving and investing for retirement. A retirement that gets to start once financial numbers are hit, not just hitting an age. Here’s what to do –

Figure out the lifestyle you want to live

Take stock of your current lifestyle and how you want to live in retirement. Figure out the “where and how” you see your ideal and financially backed life as being. Cut waste from your lifestyle and commit to a sustainable plan. Look at retirement like anything else in life. Not what age, but how much will it cost and when can I afford it.

We can set financial goals to be met by a certain age but it’s the financial numbers that we’re motivated to hit, not the birthday. The date is only relevant to measuring and tracking our progress against. See retirement as the biggest purchase of our lives and save for it because it’s a huge purchase that we can’t finance. We then get to dictate what we buy and when we buy it.

Track and validate finances, not the number of birthday candles

Once figuring out the lifestyle you want to live you get a better picture of what it will cost. Calculate how much money you need, then determine your ideal time to retire. Use a good monte carlo type retirement calculator and start playing with the numbers with different retirement dates. Pull your Social Security estimates and plug into the calculator different benefit start dates and their associated payment amounts.

Is your ideal time to retire before Medicare eligibility? Figure out how and where your retirement medical insurance will be handled and include its cost in your retirement calculations.

Diversify your investments within your risk tolerance and stick to your retirement savings plan. Plug into the calculator different stock-to-bond ratios to understand what impacts it has on your retirement funding success.

If the calculations show your retirement cost and affordability are out of whack, then time to rethink your desired retirement lifestyle. Change your plan. Just like when you can’t afford a Cadillac you instead decide to buy a Buick or Chevy to make it work and still get what you need and most of what you want.

After getting an idea of your retirement financial goals you should track your progress, success, and mistakes. Make adjustments with life’s ups and downs but always move forward toward your financial goals.

Birthdays come and go

Celebrate birthdays but don’t solely count on them to identify your ideal time to retire. Let your planned financial situation do that. Hopefully that happens early enough that there will be many birthdays to celebrate in retirement.

Seek information and get serious about retirement planning. The earlier we do this the easier it is to take control of our future. If you need or want help, seek professional assistance from a CFP. Hopefully if asked when you plan to retire you can say with confidence in “X” years and have the details to back up why and how. Remember that even if you try to better your finances and fall short, or your ideal time to retire still depends solely on your waiting for Social Security and/or Medicare, you are much farther ahead than if you had done nothing to take control of and better your personal finances.

Now let me ask you, when is the best time to retire?