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.

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.