A very astute reader asked a very simple question: Why is this scary? So I went back and looked at my post. I thought I had completed the post but obviously not. The chart lacked context. So here’s the rest of the post I thought I posted. Welcome to my Senior Moment.

The relatively high labor force participation of Boomers may be beneficial both to them and the wider economy. Some retirement experts emphasize working longer as the key to a secure retirement, in part because the generosity of monthly Social Security benefits increases with each year claiming is postponed. For the economy as a whole, economic growth in part depends on labor force growth, and the Boomers staying in the work force bolsters the latter.

Baby Boomers are staying in the labor force at rates not seen in generations for people their age — https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/07/24/baby-boomers-us-labor-force/

What I forgot to include in the post now follows.

After finishing and posting Even More Random Thoughts on Retirement – November 2023 something kept bugging me. So I thought about this for a while and uncovered what was bugging me. The following quote bugged me:

To ease the anxiety of retirement, consider delaying Social Security to get a larger monthly check and perhaps also purchasing immediate fixed annuities. I plan to do both.

What We Lose — https://humbledollar.com/2023/08/what-we-lose

Specifically the part of the quote in bold bugged me. I thought to myself, nice plan. But how many people can afford to buy an immediate fixed annuity? I can’t. How many people actually defer Social Security until age 70 to maximize their monthly payments?

Well, get ready for the ugly. It’s Scary Chart time.

Answer: 4%

Why just 4%?

Answer: 97% of people who retired sooner than planned did so due to health and employment issues.

Source: https://www.transamericacenter.org/retirement-research/23rd-annual-retirement-survey

Some retirees get fabulous bull markets right when they leave the working world while some retire into the teeth of a bear market.

How The Market Shapes Your Portfolio — https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/11/how-your-market-shapes-your-portfolio/

And some retirees will leave the working world straight into a world of high inflation.

Just beyond the guests and beyond the hornbeam trees where I’ve strung fairy lights for the party, I think I can see my future. The grind of work is finally over, my retirement dream cued up. April in Paris! Reading by the sea! Spanish lessons in Antigua so I can better speak to my grandson. I’ll be playing with him, too, in the open-ended days my children rarely knew with me. I’m not saying I deserve a life of ease. But I worked hard to earn my retirement, dropping giant chunks of my salary into company and government pension plans throughout those forty years. It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it.

Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macro-economy is messing with my micro-economy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.

The End of Retirement — https://thewalrus.ca/the-end-of-retirement/

So beware of statistics. The reason why more Baby Boomers are working is because they have to.

Thank you Ol Red Hair.