Lessons from retirees on their biggest retirement regrets

Thousands of Americans retire every day short on cash, friendships and plans. Investing for retirement means more than just stashing money in a 401(k). It’s equally important to cultivate the interests, relationships and activities that will fill our days with purpose and satisfaction when we retire.

Many retirees say they realized too late:

• Retirees could have prepared for a more financially secure and rewarding postwork life.
• Retirees would have focused on saving more money to cover the higher cost of living.
• Retirees would have put more time into building relationships, taking better care of their health or cultivating new pursuits.
• Retirees frequently don’t realize how much their career provided a sense of identity and self-worth.

The best predictor of longevity, health and happiness in later life is the quality of your relationships. That is the finding of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed families for decades.

The life expectancy for a 65-year-old is 84 for men and nearly 87 for women, according to projections by the Society of Actuaries based on 2019 data.

Surveys suggest many Americans vastly underestimate those numbers. Of 1,500 adults ages 45 to 80 polled by the Society of Actuaries in 2015, 41% of preretirees and 37% of retirees underestimated their life expectancy by five or more years, while 14% of preretirees and 18% of retirees underestimated it by two to four years.

A person who postpones benefits until age 70 instead of 62 would have to live to at least 80 to come out ahead.

Last year, Social Security paid out $1.38 trillion in overall benefits and got most of its funding from payroll taxes that generated $1.23 trillion. Believing that Social Security will vanish is akin to believing that these taxes will vanish too, policy analysts say.

Still, if Congress doesn’t shore up the program’s finances, projections show that it could be able to pay out only 83% of scheduled benefits in 2035, when the combined contents of its two trust funds would be depleted.

Learning is another key strategy.

Strategies to ward off dementia include getting more sleep, exercising and eating a healthy diet to maintain brain health, said Rudolph Tanzi, a Harvard Medical School professor of neurology and co-author of “The Healing Self.”

Even people who don’t have Alzheimer’s show cognitive changes with aging, so it is important to keep learning to keep your brain healthy, said Yaakov Stern, professor of neuropsychology at Columbia

References:

1. https://www.brownleeglobal.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-401-k-isnt-enough-to-invest-for-retirement-build-friendships-and-hobbies-11672269861