If you asked most people the happiest age to retire, you’d get answers all over the map: fifty-five, sixty-three, sixty-five, or “as soon as I possibly can.” Interestingly, researchers have actually tried to answer this question, and the findings reveal some fascinating patterns.<\/p>\n
Several studies point to the early-to-mid sixties as a common sweet spot. That’s largely because it’s the stage of life when people still have both the health and the energy to travel, spend time with family, and enjoy the lifestyle they’ve spent decades building, while also finally being free from the pressures of work.<\/p>\n
Financial planners, meanwhile, often nudge clients toward sixty-five to sixty-seven instead. A few extra years of compounding, along with the timing of government benefits, can meaningfully improve how sustainable that retirement income actually is.<\/p>\n
And perhaps most surprisingly, some people are genuinely happiest continuing to work well into their seventies. Not because they need the money, but because work gives them routine, purpose, and a sense of contribution that’s hard to replace.<\/p>\n
I explored this research in more depth in a recent video on my channel. The conclusion I landed on was that there isn’t one perfect retirement age for everyone. The happiest retirement tends to happen when three things line up at once: your finances are ready, your health allows you to enjoy it, and you actually know what you’re retiring to, rather than simply what you’re retiring from.<\/p>\n
I see both sides of this constantly in my own practice, and interestingly, neither of the two clients I’m about to describe is a business owner. Which is exactly why their stories are worth mentioning here.<\/p>\n
I have a self-employed client, in his early fifties, who calls me every few months, almost like clockwork, and asks the same question in a slightly different way each time: “Is it now yet?” He’s set his sights on retiring at fifty-five, and every conversation is really him checking whether that date has moved any closer.<\/p>\n
Each time, my answer is usually the same: not quite yet. His plan shows fifty-five as the age the numbers support, but the stress of running his day-to-day work has him hoping, every few months, that maybe this time the numbers will have moved enough to let him leave sooner.<\/p>\n
What strikes me most about his situation is that he already did the hard part, he has a real plan built on real numbers. What he’s really asking, underneath “is it now yet,” is whether he can trade a few more years of stress for a few more years of freedom. Sometimes the answer is a small adjustment. Sometimes it’s a reminder that the plan was built for a reason.<\/p>\n
Then there’s another client, an employee approaching seventy, who represents the opposite challenge entirely. Financially, he’s more than ready. He could retire tomorrow and live comfortably for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
But whenever we discuss retirement, he circles back to the same worry: he doesn’t know who he would be without his work. He’s convinced that stepping away means losing his sense of purpose, and honestly, for someone who has spent decades building a career, that fear is completely understandable.<\/p>\n
Now here’s the part that matters for you as a business owner: if a self-employed person and an employee both wrestle this hard with the timing<\/em> and purpose<\/em> questions, imagine how much more complicated it gets when your identity, your income, and your net worth are all tied up in a company you also have to hand off.<\/p>\n For an employee, retirement age is largely a financial and personal question. For a business owner, it’s a transaction, and that changes everything.<\/p>\n It’s not just about whether your finances are sorted and your health is intact. It’s about whether your business can function without you in the room. It’s about whether your personal wealth is built on more than just the value of the company. And it’s about whether you’ve actually given yourself permission to picture life on the other side of the transition.<\/p>\n For manufacturing business owners, retirement planning often overlaps with business succession planning. Whether the goal is selling the business, transitioning leadership to family members, or preparing a management team to take over, retirement readiness depends on far more than investment portfolios and retirement income projections.<\/p>\n So if the research says the happiest retirees have their finances sorted, their health intact, and a clear sense of what they’re retiring to, then for business owners there’s a fourth condition worth adding to that list: a business, and a successor, ready to carry on without you standing in the room.<\/p>\n That’s the work worth starting years before you actually need the answer, not the year you finally decide you’re done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Research Says About the Best Retirement Age If you asked most people the happiest age to retire, you’d get answers all over the map: fifty-five, sixty-three, sixty-five, or “as soon as I possibly can.” Interestingly, researchers have actually tried to answer this question, and the findings reveal some fascinating patterns. Several studies point to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\nBusiness Succession May Be More Important Than Retirement Age<\/h3>\n