Author: MJT
Should You Consider Early Retirement Incentives?
Any employee, seasoned or not, considering an early
retirement incentive program offered by their employer, should keep one thing
in mind: early retirement incentive programs are not designed to make your retirement
cushier, they’re really designed to stimulate turnover for your employer. Even
so, if you were already planning to retire early, or have decided that this is
a good life decision for you, than you should consider taking the incentives of
an early retirement program. Early retirement incentive programs will allow you
to retire before the legal age that you are eligible to begin receiving social
security and Medicare, but still receive similar benefits from your employer. Depending on the early retirement incentives
being offered to you, you could retire five or six years early and receive an
average of 15-20% of your annual salary including full health benefits.
Weighing the Pros and Cons of Early Retirement
There are many factors that may contribute to your decision
to take an early retirement incentive program. Financially you are still taking
a cut by retiring early, even though you are receiving the benefits of
retirement before you would have otherwise been eligible. But maybe you’re
seeking a better quality of life after working a stressful job for decades, and
the cost of working those few extra years isn’t worth it to you because your
time wouldn’t be spent doing something you love to do. Or maybe you want to
retire from your current career to pursue other opportunities in your early
retirement. All those years of experience could certainly lend themselves too
many possibilities, whether they are related to your career directly or not.
Traveling is another pro of early retirement. You may be in a more active frame
of mind now than you will be ten years from now, so you might want to take
advantage of this time and go see parts of the world that you haven’t yet
experienced.
The biggest con of taking early retirement incentives is
giving up a job you love, and one that you are especially good at. Maybe your
employment is your main way of meeting new people, keeping you connected to a
social life beyond your family. If you love your job, or just the idea of
working and being around other people, and weren’t considering leaving before
you were offered early retirement incentives, than it would seem that you would
be better off to stay those few extra years at your full salary and continue to
do what you like to do for as long as you can do it.
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