Has the COVID-19 pandemic focused you to consider delaying retirement? Recent surveys have indicated that many of us are rethinking our retirement plans because of COVID-19. In fact, one survey from the nonprofit group Life Happens suggests that 43% of Americans say they plan to postpone and continue working past their retirement date, due to the pandemic.
This is troubling for a lot of reasons. Before you make a decision to postpone your retirement, it’s important that you make an honest assessment of where you are, and how you got there. Ask yourself:
- How is your health? Did you know that 4 out of 10 current retirees said that they were forced to retire earlier than planned because of health issues?
- How is your asset allocation? More specifically, if you are expecting to retire in three years, were you invested 100% in equities, hoping for one or two great years from the stock market? Not reallocating your portfolio away from equities the closer you get to retirement is actually a pretty common mistake.
- Did you alter your financial plan because of COVID-19? Intuitively, working in your retirement years can have an enormous positive impact to how long your money lasts. Every year that you delay collecting Social Security benefits, your monthly benefit will increase by 8% each year until you reach the age of 70.
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