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Comment by svachalek | Hacker News Reader

These days if you graduate at 21 and want to work until 65, the encouraged retirement age in much of the world, that's about 44 years of work. They're trying to slide things up to 72 now, and who knows, by the time anyone starting out today gets there we may live much longer or even forever.

My point is, expect to work a LONG TIME. It's not about pulling a few all-nighters for finals, collecting a piece of paper, and waving goodbye. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Do what you gotta do to keep it interesting, because no one else is going to do that for you and the "end" is so far in the future it's not even worth thinking about. Take vacation time, take on new challenges, go back to school and start a new career, stop and smell the roses once in a while. It's your life, choose it.

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Why let someone else prescribe your retirement age?!

Because it is how it works in many countries?

Your ability to retire is tied to your financial situation. What does that have to do with the government?

A sizable chunk of our paychecks have been stripped away over the years, with the promise of a return after the governmentally decreed retirement age. Therefore, our financial situation has something to do with the government when it comes to retirement. It's quite possible that we can retire earlier or must wait until later in spite of this, but it's a clear and frequently unavoidable connection for most of us in at least the US and I think most other developed countries have something similar.

This is getting a bit off topic, but agreed it's a factor. My point is mostly about the mindset. You don't have to wait until some government prescribed age to do what you want. We make our own future.

Agreed. People should do actual financial planning based on their actual situation.

And your financial situation is, for many people, tied to your age because pensions, 401(k)s/IRAs and the like offer tax exemptions that are conditional upon waiting until you hit a certain age before collecting distributions. If you withdraw early from a retirement account, you face something like a 10% haircut in addition to the income taxes. If your money is outside of such a tax shelter, well then you just need more of it to retire because you have to pay income tax plus capital gains tax.

I think his point was that, for at least some of the readers here, the goal of "retire early" means that one has enough wealth that even without tax breaks, one has the resources to live or work or play as you see fit -- whether that means continuing to start new companies, or raising llamas.

I know what his point was. I was just pointing out that when you retire, for most people, does have something to do with your age and with the government, because the government offers tax shelters that are tied to your age, and these are what most people use to fund their retirement.

Of course if you're rich enough, you can just pay the taxes and still be rich enough. But that's a circular argument. The point is, the bar for "rich enough to retire" is much higher the younger you are--and not just because you have more years of life ahead of you, but also because of the taxes.

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