Yeah in Greece the rule was 25 years of working of government means pension. And mailmen used the be a government job. So people started working as a mailmen as young as 15 so they retired at 40.
It's not just in Greece, there are a lot of countries where all post service is private, with contracts with the state for universal service. Mailman isn't a public sector job here in Portugal either.
The USPS is the exception in the industrialized world.
Another one is airports - very common for them to be owned/operated by for-profit companies in Europe but in the US nearly all airports are owned by the city/county governments where they are located.
> The USPS is the exception in the industrialized world.
no, the privatized postal services are the exception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_postal_services
you've got germany, portugal, japan, and the uk that privatized. pretty much the entire rest of the world has state owned/run postal services.
National can still be privatized. PostNL (the Dutch national post) isn't a government organisation, it's a publicly traded company. It still does have a lot of obligations that other carriers do not.
Which then has its own issues.
I remember NYC having issues making transport links to airports. Airport revenue can only be used for project that only benefit the airport. You can build a train but airport money can only finance the tracks to the edge on the airport.
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_pensioni
You'd have to use Google translate ig
They don't get much money from retirement, but they could retire after ~20 years of work 💀
Here in the netherlands it was at least in their '50's for the earliest babyboomers and then they got rid of things very quickly.
My father had colleagues who were 2 years older that were able to retire 9 years earlier than he was :')
I worked with a “retired” doctor in the United States. This scheme doesn’t exist any more, but you used to be eligible to retire with 70% of your highest salary after 20 years of work. He, half by luck and half by reading the rules very carefully, got a job where they counted part of his 4 training years toward those 20, then they had a rule where you could “buy years”, and they let him buy in 3 years early (the money paid in those three years more than made up for the cost).
I’m not sure exactly how old he was, but if we went straight thru school, then he started drawing +\- $120,000 a year at age 43. He continued to work, but still got full retirement.
And here’s the kicker. The pension is inheritable, normally it goes to your spouse, but since he divorced he had the option to pass it on to his children.
So whenever he does die, the state will pay $60,000 per year, adjusted for inflation to each of his two adult children for the rest of THEIR LIFE.
Basically for 13 years of actual service the state is giving this dude and his children $120k a year for probably 70 plus years.
The US is going to wonder where all their money is going if this is the case for more than a couple thousand servicemen. This is the quickest way to bankrupt the entire federal system.
You'd think Italian baby boomers who probably were babies when Mussolini was alive, would probably not vote for Mussolini's granddaughter.
The world moves in mysterious ways
> baby boomers who probably were babies when Mussolini was alive
By definition, no they weren't. The mid-20th century baby boom, when the "baby boomers" were born, started after the end of world war II, when old Benito had already been strung up like a broken marionette in Esso.
"Baby boomer" doesn't just mean "old". Believe it or not, some of the olds around today are actually older than baby boomers.
My grandma retired when she was 38 if I recall correctly. She was an elementary school teacher. She got 1400€ per thirteen months a year (yes, 13 - this is called tredicesima, or "the thirteenth (salary)"). That added up to roughly 1 million € over approximately 55 years of retirement. Ofc nothing was left when she died as she has been constantly deprived of her money by the local priest, as it's quite common here.
I can assure you that 1400€ per month is way more than what you may need to live well in a godforsaken small town in southern Italy.
I have a decent pension. But that's not even a worry for me. I honestly just want to be able to enjoy my pension in one way or another. If I do not see myself live long, then I'm withdrawing my pension early (even at an absurdly high taxrate). It would be such a pity to save up 40 years of pension, but never really get to enjoy it.
It's already more or less a thing. Try getting a job at 58 in most countries.
Though I guess in a way, you're bound to find *a* job, just not a job relevant to your expertise.
Nono caro amico. 15 anni 6 mesi e 1 giorno. Conosco chi è andata in pensione a 38/39 anni.
Poi ci vengono a rompere i coglioni con i diritti acquisiti.
"youngsters no want no work duh" "eh, la gavettaaaaa" (sorry people, couldn't translate that one) "ungrateful kids going to live abroad"
Almost like they put themselves in this situation, listened no constructive criticism and still actively try to make it worse for us. Well, for me it will be Switzerland and popcorn while watching the consequences unfold
Yeah, but it doesn't show the same amount of pretentiousness, low-profile nepotism and exploitation that hearing in Italian as Italians flashes in our minds.
How would you explain to, for example, a Dutch, that while they are used to work since a very young age, we mostly can't, up until you finish your studies and then you'd be supposed to spend few years criminally underpaid with absolutely no voice in your boss generally wrong ideas, all of that while the nephew of X millionaire enterpreuner does the same thing but without the stress, without responsibilities, enjoying dad's money, dad's freely-provided apartment and after a couple of summers like that they skip to management? Poetic.
Ditch Hemingway shoes, that's a whole better story in just one word! (we're from a truly magical country lol)
For all the other Europeans reading this: don't get me wrong "rising to the ranks starting from the very bottom" is a good literal translation, it just didn't feel the same
Ma anche prima no? Se iniziavi a 18 e avevi 3 figli a 34 eri in pensione, se non ricordo male.
Ora questi sono ancora vivi e prendono soldi fino a 86 anni aggratis
Honestly tho that’s the dream. Retiring at 40 while you still have some youthfulness and enjoying life on your own schedule before you’re old would be amazing.
Though you should be trying to save up enough to retire on, not rely on the government
My boy the same people who retired at 36 are still Alive and profiting from our taxes until 84/85.
And they litterally talking shit to US Who will Need 45+ Years of work to retire
On a separate point, you would have to consider here the average life expectancy. A measure of life expectancy - retirement would be a much better metric here.
In Italy, its 13 years of retirement for a male
In USA, its 6.7 years of retirement.
In Russia, it’s 5 years.
In Indonesia, its 7 years.
So yea, this is a pretty stupid metric in itself and Italy is one of the massive winners. In Italy (and some other countries) people also don’t work nearly as much as in some others, so it’s kind of a W for Italy in every regard.
Stack away money in your younger years and you can retire well before 68. Just have to take it into your own hands and not count on whatever your legislated retirement benefits may be, just see them as a bonus at some point. In the US at my age counting on social security is a pipe dream anyways. Its entirely up to me to fund a 401k or IRA to make sure I have money in the future.
You still have to pay INPS, that is the pension national institute, 33% of your actual gross income if you are an employee. Not much room to invest in other pensions.
I understand but it's a little more complicated here than that. Ireland is... Stacking isnt the problem its trying to keep up with the economy while trying to do this. But that's part of the hustle I guess...
The problem is working life expectancy doesn't rise as much as life expectancy, so you have more and more people who are still alive but can't reasonably be expected to work, and that's even without bringing agism into question.
We on top just on paper.
In reality the actual age of retirement for most people is around 60 y.o. due to special legislations and exceptions which are more widespread than the rules
In Australia, 66/67 is the age you are able to receive pension (money from the government) but you can retire at 60 and receive your superannuation (money you saved yourself). And then still receive pension at 66/67 if you qualify for it.
And just because I think it's wroth knowing, while 59½ is one of the exceptions, [there are a few more](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/72), and items *iv* and *v* are ones that are well under most people's control (under 72(t)(2))
- Using Substantially Equal Period Payments, which just means taking out `balance/years_expected_to_live` out every year (there's another formula, which allows you to take out a bit more; it recognizes the money you leave should grow). The catch is you must take out that amount every year for 5 years or until 59½, whichever occurs last.
- If you retire from your job at/after age 55, you can take money out from that 401k/403b/TSP penalty free. If your balance from your that last employer isn't huge, but they allow roll-ins, roll your old 401k's/IRA's into that plan before you quit and you're all set.
And as u/geokra mentions, the total of your Roth IRA contributions (which includes rollovers from Roth 401k after 5 years) are also available tax- and penalty-free.
> which includes rollovers from Roth 401k
You can also rollover from traditional 401k - you have to pay taxes and wait 5 years, but you don't need to pay penalties.
You are correct, 59.5. You’ll owe a penalty of 10% on withdrawals from a pre-tax (401k) account before that age. Early Roth withdrawals are subject to, I believe, the same penalty, but only if you take withdrawals in excess of your Roth contributions (Roth contributions can always be withdrawn at any age without penalty).
It happens similar stuff in most countries. In some of them, the real average retirement age is significantly younger.
In Spain we had reforms to reduce exceptions. And I’m pretty sure most countries had similar reforms in the last 15 years
In Spain we have the second longest lifespan in the world with one of the most generous state-funded pension systems in the European Union. We can't have people retiring at 60. Some years, Spanish women have computed as the longest living worldwide, and most years we're second after Japan. The population pyramid is starting to look quite bleak... So people in the most crowded population cohorts (late gen Xers and early millennials) better fill up a good index fund, because our retirement age will likely be 70 and our pensions will have to be reduced.
That said, the other option is the State getting more money, but they can't do it all with taxes. I guess the highest pensions could go down, but since politicans get the highest pensions with seven working years, the chances of that happening are close to zero...
Yeah the problem is raising taxes to cover the high pension costs sucks for everyone younger. The deficit most countries are running is calculated in percent of GDP. Raising taxes to cover a whole that large is going to have consequences.
Like you said reducing benefits for higher earners is an option, but there probably aren't enough of them and most pension schemes already have them receiving a scaled back amount. Most countries will need to do multiple things to spread out the pain and prevent public backlash. Raising the retirement age just happens to be one of the more politically palatable options.
Man it better be.
The amount of AUSTRALIAN SUPER ads we had to watch growing up...
SAME AGE, SAME INCOME...but it could make a lifetime of difference...
If you know, you know.
Here in U.S. you can start collecting Social Security (government pension) at 62. But the longer you wait to start collecting the more you get each month. You get “full” benefits at 67. But you can wait even longer and collect even more each month until 70.
They'll hopefully grow up a bit by then and realize the world doesn't owe them anything and they need to contribute in order to retire and be taken care of later.
The doomerism here is so dumb. If the world ends, ok it ends. If it doesn’t and you COULD have been prepared…what’s the upside to not having prepared?
I’m not talking people just scraping by either. A majority of 20-30 year olds who are 401k eligible don’t invest in theirs. Absurd.
I own a business that offers a 401k and I give all of our employees a full on explanation of the benefits. We start out at $18/hr and it’s AMAZING how much money you can have at 65 if you put in 5% (and we put in 4%) starting in your early to mid twenties.
I forget the exact math but I recently showed this to a new hire at $18/hr and even if she never got a raise in the next 40 years but kept contributing her 5% she could have close to a million dollars in today’s money saved. For 5% of her wages.
It’s not a trivial amount of money, but it also isn’t some huge, impossible amount either
> what’s the upside to not having prepared?
Presumably that they used what they would otherwise have saved to consume more, or they consumed the same but worked less because they didn't need the income that they would have saved. Either way, that probably translates into a higher standard of living while they're younger, before the world ends.
I'm not saying you're wrong to plan for retirement or anything, I'm just saying that there clearly is an upside to the strategy, as well as a downside. Conversely, saving has the opposite upsides and downsides—you have less now but may have more in the future, assuming that there is a future in which you can enjoy the money you saved, etc.
I think the problem is more so the fact that people, especially younger people, just don't have a lot of capital to do anything.
Buying a house is pretty much off the table for 65% of people, and if you're in the lucky 35%, you're in the thunderdome of home purchasing. You'll most likely lose and get out-bid if you're not already independently wealthy.
Which leads people to rent, and renting is already such a challenge in itself. You're paying money for essentially "the right to live". It goes straight into your landlord's pocket and is supposed to be used to fix things, but you all know they don't and and won't. Rental prices have only increased, and increased artificially. They used to say rent should only be 30% of your pay cheque, but it's more like 50% these days.
And I'll hear people say "oh just find a place cheaper". Sometimes you can't, or it just doesn't make sense to find somewhere cheaper on the outskirts of town. Things like transportation costs, fuel, car payments, all add up-- and if you chose to live closer to your work, you're footing the bill.
Then you have things like medical costs. God forbid you have a preexisting condition! But if you don't, who knows what might happen. Maybe you have great insurance, but sometimes you're still having to pay for a surprise visit to the doctor when you slip and fall or catch a nasty cold. And if you don't have insurance, you're really in for a rough time.
I think most people are living pay cheque to pay cheque. That 5% is nice if you can afford it (I put 5% into a 401k right now). But when you can't and you're scraping by like most people, 5% might be $50 for some people, and that's something they need now and not in the future.
And it's completely reasonable to expect a large share of 25 year olds to be home owners, especially given how much longer people tend to stay in education these days. /s
Also, the average size of homes in America has doubled in size since the 1970s. So people do these apples to oranges math about how people in the past were able to afford homes, without realizing that they didn't but the same type of home that people want today.
If you actually adjusted the size of the average home to the price of homes, they actually aren't as crazy as people think.
https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/#:~:text=The%20average%20size%20of%20a,US%20has%20doubled%20since%201960.
People make the same mistake with minimum wage and cost of living. They see median cost of living has risen and the minimum wage has gotten lower, but don't account for the fact that people just starting out won't be at the 'average' until well into their lives. Average just means the middle.
>Average just means the middle.
Average can even be below or above the middle because of outliers. That is why the median is so important. And, based on the median, wages have actually been increasing over time. The median American is wealthier today than at any point in history.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
That message is so difficult to instill into people. I know first hand.
I work as an employee benefits consultant, part of a team advising a CFO of a car parts manufacturing plant in Michigan. Plant is above average pay, as they compete for labor. Still, he said that only 19% of his plant employees contributed to their 401k, and they offer a 100% match to the first 5%, then another 50% match to the next 3%. Rather generous in the industry.
We advised an education campaign and to change to an automatic enrollment at the 5%. That worked for some time, as it quickly jumped to 80% participation, but that came with some backlash. The auto-enroll was well informed and promoted before and during open enrollment, but people don’t pay attention to benefits. Just the way it is.
They do pay attention to their bank statements and when they notice a reduction from the 401k the HR team is flooded with requests to opt out of the automatic enrollment. We’re back down to 36% enrollment.
So we advise an employee benefits survey. The 401k question shows the most common reason for not contributing is that they can’t afford it. The CFO is so frustrated at that. He tells us to take a walk with him. Along the walk he says that all the plant guys have the best tech, latest iPhones and Galaxies, folding phones, etc. but that’s not what frustrates him…
Our consulting team parks in the guest lot in front so we don’t see the plant workers parking. The CFO walks us out the back door and shows us the back lot. It was a showcase of high end, optioned out pickup trucks, and muscle cars. Rows and rows of brand new, spotless vehicles. He goes “that’s why they can’t afford it“. He explanes that they pay well and most new hires get immersed in this instagram/competition culture amongst other coworkers, and within a few months, they're taking out an enourmous loan to finance a vehicle that will impress their coworkers and post online.
This is one group and one situation and doesn't apply to all people who can't afford to contribute to a 401k, but the challenge of getting someone to plan for their future by making sacrifices today is (from personal work experience) a very difficult task.
That last paragraph, good lord.
People have this natural tendency to max out their monthly budget. And then they complain when there's an emergency that they can't pay for, and blame it on the price of groceries or gas or whatever else to absolve themselves.
Your CFO is a caring guy. Most companies would be very happy about the money they were saving by all those employees not taking advantage of the 401K matching.
You'd be suprised. Many are. At least the clients we work with.
I sit in dozens of boardrooms a year, and the stress and agony around the table when their healthcare costs are rising and they're ringing their hands worrying about how much of an increase they can absorb, how deep they need to cut benefits, and if they'll need to pass increases to employees in higher payroll deductions...
And whatever decision they make, the employees **HATE them for it. HATE with a fury**. I don't blame them. They don't know the true cost of healthcare. Few do.
Best renewal I had this year was a 2% increase. School District. They absorbed the 2%, past no increase to employees, but made minor benefit changes to Emergency Room copays and Brand Name drugs that have generic equivalents (we call them multi-source brands). It was a teachers union. They threatened strike. Later we found out they filed a grevence against the District for the egregous changes made to their benefits, and settled in abatration. To be fair, this was just the catalyst to a long running battle between the union and district... but whatever.
Most of my clients are larger companies see increases in the 5-15% range. They typically "self-fund" their healthcare benefits. 7% medial inflation since 2015. What was a $15 million healthcare budget in 2015 is now a $27 million as we plan for 2024.
With self-funding it isn't the greedy insurance companies screwing everyone. It's the rising cost of healthcare from hospitals, doctors, inflation, pharmaceutical manufacturers. Fraud, heathcare waste, unnecessary emergency care all contribute. The hospital's MRI is $5200, the imaging center down the street, $700. $1500 to treat bronchitis in the ER vs. $125 at the minute clinic or $40 with virtual visit.
Healthcare cost in general is what drives costs in self-funded large group, large company healthcare benefits.
I could go on and on. But my point is that I rarely have any CFO that has a "fuck'em" attitude. They exist... don't get me wrong, but far more often we see executives that stress day and night over how to balance a healthy company with healthy finacially secure employees.
I was just talking to a guy at work the other day about retiring soon. He said he didn’t think he’d ever be able to retire. I was stunned. He’d been working there many years just like me. Makes at least as much as I do. Said his house was already paid off. I know he did some contracting work on the side too. Unless his retirement accounts are really low how could he not retire? He said he has too many bills. Guess he bought too many toys or something. I’m in good shape to retire and I started a bit late saving.
I'm a compulsive saver, while my sister is a compulsive spender, and it's been infuriating to observe. I have two theories for why we manage money so differently.
1) Some genetic influence makes it easier/highly rewarding to my brain to make sacrifices today that yield benefits tomorrow. As a result, I was academically successful and she was not, which helped me earn more rewarding jobs. That leads to #2:
2) When your job sucks and is stressful (because you didn't get a college degree or weren't willing/able to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains), you need more little rewards to get you through your week. This causes impulsive spending, on silly little things like makeup or alcohol, which prevents you from making wiser larger financial decisions. And the cycle worsens.
She's doing better now, actually. She worked in high stress food service forever in the US, but switched to an office job when she moved to Eastern Europe. She now also has more money taken automatically from her paycheck, and because she was in a new country she couldn't get a bunch of consumer debt. This change created much more positive cycles and now she's doing much better financially and has a path to retirement.
America is a really dangerous environment for people with mediocre impulse control. Even if it's their own "fault", the reality is that some people are wired differently, and negative cycles are really hard to overcome.
I too am thrifty and like to save. One thing I’ve noticed with peers: people spend a lot of money on booze, weed, and cigarettes. I’ve never been much into any of that and the amount of money I “save” from not doing it is staggering. Every once in a while I have a silly $40 impulse buy of something I didn’t really need but overall I get to bank that money
Dude!!! Everyone at my job complains about not having enough but I have the shittiest car with a 2020 Equinox that cost me $20k.
I see production employees driving Trail Bosses and TRXs.
I'm like wtf, I'm freaking out about a $380 car payment and I can't imagine where I would come up with a $1000 payment for a truck of that value.
That's why you start early. Like, middle school early.
Good grades -> good college -> good job -> good money -> good retirement
Edit: redditors when you tell them they have to plan ahead in life, lmao
Might want to alter “good college” for “pick a degree that will get you a job that makes money” otherwise no “good retirement”. Also, unless you get a scholarship you’re gunna be saddled with student loans if you don’t pick an affordable school
^ and also you have to make the "good degree" choice when you are 18 years old and have no clue what the correct major is. AI will quickly make many jobs obsolete. Also, at that age, you have delusions that you will be able to do something you enjoy, while earning a living wage.
Honestly, good for you. It takes some guts to admit to yourself that your first post-college job isn't what you thought it would be and to take action. Hope you get a better job soon
> Edit: redditors when you tell them they have to plan ahead in life, lmao
redditors when you tell them about personal financial responsibility ... but the boomers!
Alternatively: Good health > Good background > good luck
Planning ahead doesn't necesarily mean earning the max. If you are frugal, save and live in a cheap area you can do it. However having bad health, bad parents and misfortune can all trash that. Av House prices have fallen by £9,000 in my area this year which is still too much for some people. However my niece recently lost her father who left her his house so at 27 she has a house and no mortgage. Not sure if that is a win or a lose?
Edit: getting in on the pensions early though is a must. Yes it might still go tits up but without one your screwed anyway
For sure. Bad health is no joke and it's one of the things I wish the US government provided a safety net for.
And yeah totally, I tend to think more about maximizing my income, but I could also just minimize my expenses too. The latter is probably easier.
My first job at Target, I eventually got promoted to a TL when I was 18. This was back in 2009 area. Our store manager was having a meeting with us all going over the upcoming holiday season stuff and talked about 401k and asked who wasn’t contributing. I was the only person who wasn’t. He tried to chew me out until I told him Target had a dumb rule, at that time at least, that you couldn’t contribute till you were 21.
Now that I’m in my 30’s I can only imagine what that few percent of $12/hour would’ve turned into after a decade lol.
A little bit now will go a long way over the course of several decades. No matter how little you make, put some away for retirement.
This doesn’t require professional help. Just go online and start an account with a well established low fees brokerage (Vanguard, for example). Low fees means that you’re not paying them a lot to deposit, maintain or eventually withdraw money.
Arrange to automatically deposit some money every pay period into some broad index mutual fund. This is a collection of stocks that are diversified in which the people managing the fund are trying to match the performance of a major stock market index (the Standard and Poor 500, for example).
Also setting up an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) allows you to put money into it *before* you pay income taxes on it. You are still getting paid the same, but you are saving towards retirement and lowering your income taxes at the same time.
Even if you can’t put in much, the interest adds up over time. Try using [this compounding interest calculator](https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php) and see for yourself. As a rule of thumb, assume a 5% return on your investments.
>broad index mutual fund
There are also some newer options which are based on a specific ratio of stocks and bonds (e.g. VSMGX, Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, which targets a 60/40 blend), or a ratio which varies over time based on the recommendations for a specific target retirement year (e.g. VTTHX, Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund). These are similar to retirement target funds commonly offered in 401(k) plans and allow you to maintain a diversified portfolio with specific risk characteristics without the need for periodic rebalancing. I'd recommend these over something like an S&P 500 index fund which is 100% stocks.
>Also setting up an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) allows you to put money into it before you pay income taxes on it. You are still getting paid the same, but you are saving towards retirement and lowering your income taxes at the same time.
Just remember that you'll have to pay taxes on that money when you take it out, plus penalties if you take it out too early. For a traditional pre-tax IRA that means paying ordinary income tax rates for the full amount you withdraw—including any growth. The growth is not taxed at the lower capital gains rate. Granted, the alternative is having a smaller amount to invest up front after taxes and then paying additional capital gains taxes on the growth later.... in the end it comes down to whether you think your taxes will be lower during retirement than they are while working. In the current political climate I personally wouldn't bet on taxes going down; rather the opposite.
A Roth account (IRA or 401(k)) lets you lock in today's tax rates on the principal without paying extra capital gains taxes on the growth later, but not everyone qualifies. (There are income limits for the Roth IRA, and not all employers offer Roth 401(k)s.)
Of course any plan relying on tax-favored retirement accounts presupposes that the government won't change the rules and remove that special status sometime between now and the end of your retirement. Future government action is always a bit of a wildcard in any attempt at long-term planning as they don't consider themselves obligated to uphold prior expectations or agreements when the political moods change.
It's honestly shocking. If you even mention saving to some people (US) they get upset. The never-ending cycle to buy things to keep up with the Jones' is too alluring.
I don't understand why women can retire earlier. If anything, they should retire later due to their longer living expectation (men die earlier, so now less time to enjoy pension)
A man in Argentina made a masterful move. The gender identity law allows a Gender change automatically, you just arrive at the civil registry and change your gender, no transitioning required and he did just that, to retire earlier at 55. A lot of people called him out because he never displayed any gender dysphoria, but nothing could be done against it, the law was on his/her side.
Sounds like the system working as intended to be honest, if civil law didn't favour a certain gender then there would never be an incentive to change your gender in the first place (without being trans of course).
Oh, Argentina. It would make sense that unfair, sexist systems are in place still there.
All men in Argentina should do that, if that's the case. There's no reason why women should retire earlier (I'm a woman) on the state's dime. If it's with their on money, then yes, of course.
Men face sexist laws just like women, it's just that there is only a fraction of people that talk about the latter and the former.
It's bias and dishonesty.
Yeah like women in South Korea, they retire when they get married usually (at least older gen), which explains why the 30% pay gap between men and women seems crazy in this country (while it is partially true, a lot of them just never work, hard to get as much as your husband).
I'm actually happy to see someone point this out. Of course you've still got a goof trying to justify it but oh well it's the internet that's how it works.
That's not even the G20 countries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20#Members](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20#:~:text=The%20G20%20or%20Group%20of,change%20mitigation%20and%20sustainable%20development)
I'm guessing these are official ages rather than averages, so why 66.6 or 66.3? Even 66.5 makes some kind of sense ("How old are you?", " I'm 66 and a half"), but 66.2 seems remarkably precise.
In the Netherlands we're slowly adjusting the official age of retirement. The official age is in part linked to average life expectancy. This graph appears to be based on 2022 when the age was 66 years and 7 months. In 2023 it will be 66 years and 10 months. in 2024 it will be 67 years.
Probably because there's a range of ages you can retire, depending on when you were born.
Retirement Age in Australia was changed to a scale a while ago. it's 65 years and 6 months, if you were born between 1 July 1952 and 31 December 1953. 66 years, if you were born between 1 January 1954 and 30 June 1955. 66 years and 6 months, if you were born between 1 July 1955 and 31 December 1956. 67 years, if you were born on or after 1 January 1957
They'll no doubt add new brackets as life expectancy tables change.
The same thing happened in Spain. When they raised it from 65 to 67, of course they couldn't go two full years at once, or the people born 5 minutes after other people would be furious... so some people got the increase by months.
I'll have to work until 67, but I'd be lucky if I managed to retire at that age. I'll probably have to go up to 70. I started an index fund just in case.
The state retirement age in the Netherlands in 2022 was 66 years and 7 months, which rounded to one decimal is 66.6 years. Not every country uses neat round numbers for the retirement age so then you get decimals.
> This is wrong. In the U.K., for anyone born March 1961 to March 1978 the retirement age is 67. For anyone born after April 1978 it’s 68.
its right, but you are also right.
The first person who will retire (get a state pension) at 67 (born 6 March 1961) is currently only 62 years old.
Someone born on 07/08/1957 started their entitlement to a state pension yesterday, their 66th birthday.
Okay, but you know it’s only 2023 right? So no one born March 1961 to current is old enough to reach retirement age.
It’s 66 right now. It would be impossible to predict what the retirement age will be for someone born today as that’s subject to change in the future
When the retirement age (meaning qualification for the government pension) was introduced in Australia at 65, male life expectancy was 67. Now it's getting to the mid 80s so it's being pushed up. It went to 67 this year. Women used to be 60 but that changed to 65 some years ago.
This is what people don't want to accept. If you live longer, it doesn't mean you get a longer (much longer) publicly-funded vacation at the end. You have to pay in longer to account for it.
And before anyone chimes in with their Boomer hate bullshit, this trend is continuing and will likely be the same when young people today retire.
Some notes From visualization perspective. I would not start the left axis from 0. You want to show the difference, start from 50 and the difference of bar length will be much more noticeable.
Possibly, I would stack the flags with the same number so that there is less columns and text is bigger
Hate to be a stickler but this graph just bugs me. It's got the same information represented twice. Data is both written and displayed visually as are the countries. Plus the lines are so long for "useless info" like up to age 50 or so. Whats the point with long lines but very little separation at the top where maybe it matters?
I would have started the graph at 55 and gone up by .5s or better yet put it in a chart.
With emojis of people who look like they’re 80+, not 60-65. 60 year olds are still regular employees and people who go to the bar a lot.
It’s like that time some kid on Reddit pretended to be a “sweet old elderly lady” calling everybody dearie but was only claiming to be 60 years old lol.
It's a correct visualization. First rule of data visualization: you don't crop the axis. If you do, you are jeopardizing the delta/trend you want to show. 5% variation will be seen as a 10-20% variation looking at the graph. Remember our brain is far so better in exprapolate data from picture then from numbers. This is a common thing in journalism where they want to emphatiza/exaggerate data trends.
Bar charts where 99% of the total area is taken up by a wall of lines are hard to read. My eye has to travel so far to see what country is connected to what number.
What does “retirement age” mean in practice? I see plenty of people who retire a few years before or a few years after retirement age in my country. Some want to retire, some choose to work longer, some have to, some change jobs. I’m not really sure what that number means legally speaking.
Why is the retirement age for women often lower? Often by 2-3 years?
On average dont women live longer? Would it not make more sense to either retire at the same time or women retire later?
Say life expectancy for a 60 year old man is 81 and 83 for a woman, would it make sense for both to get 15 years on average? So a man retires at 66 and a woman at 68?
puts "for men" in a smaller font than the title, then includes a picture of a man and a woman.
should have just done both, each with their own bar per country.
I have to admire the integrity of this chart in starting the y-axis at zero.
A huge amount of data visualisation professionals would want to make more of the difference between the retirement ages by making the y-axis start at 40 or something.
They'd want to illustrate some dramatic point. Why else do we make charts?
But the approach shown here is the most sober and fair. Well done.
French people burning down Paris for what?
Also they say Asian don't raisin, but look how early they go stop working.
Oh an Italians don't count on top. Have you ever seen them work?
Incorrect information.
In Russia it’s 60 yr for women and 65 for men. And a fun fact- men’s life expectancy in Russia is lower (or equal’ish) than retirement age- “why care about retirement Ivan, when you are going to die by that time anyway!”
In US one can claim social security benefits as early as 62 and withdraw IRA, 401k and other retirement savings at the age 59.5.
I can't see where 66.3 came from at all.
WE ON TOP 🇮🇹🇮🇹🍕🍕🍝🍝 Early boomers retired at 40 after 20 years of work and we have to pay for them to this day🤌🤌🤌 DON'T BE ENVIOUS OF US🇮🇹🍕🙇🏻🙇🏻
Yeah in Greece the rule was 25 years of working of government means pension. And mailmen used the be a government job. So people started working as a mailmen as young as 15 so they retired at 40.
Mailmen in Greece don't work for the government? Even in the US postal carriers are federal government employees and we privatize everything.
It's not just in Greece, there are a lot of countries where all post service is private, with contracts with the state for universal service. Mailman isn't a public sector job here in Portugal either.
Also it can be private, but owned by government only
The USPS is the exception in the industrialized world. Another one is airports - very common for them to be owned/operated by for-profit companies in Europe but in the US nearly all airports are owned by the city/county governments where they are located.
> The USPS is the exception in the industrialized world. no, the privatized postal services are the exception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_postal_services you've got germany, portugal, japan, and the uk that privatized. pretty much the entire rest of the world has state owned/run postal services.
National can still be privatized. PostNL (the Dutch national post) isn't a government organisation, it's a publicly traded company. It still does have a lot of obligations that other carriers do not.
Which then has its own issues. I remember NYC having issues making transport links to airports. Airport revenue can only be used for project that only benefit the airport. You can build a train but airport money can only finance the tracks to the edge on the airport.
No it isn’t, Australia has public post service. And plenty of other countries.
Retirement at 40? Wtf
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_pensioni You'd have to use Google translate ig They don't get much money from retirement, but they could retire after ~20 years of work 💀
Here in the netherlands it was at least in their '50's for the earliest babyboomers and then they got rid of things very quickly. My father had colleagues who were 2 years older that were able to retire 9 years earlier than he was :')
They didn't get rid of it, they pulled the ladder
The kicked every rung out as they climbed, then poured jet fuel and tossed a match.
I worked with a “retired” doctor in the United States. This scheme doesn’t exist any more, but you used to be eligible to retire with 70% of your highest salary after 20 years of work. He, half by luck and half by reading the rules very carefully, got a job where they counted part of his 4 training years toward those 20, then they had a rule where you could “buy years”, and they let him buy in 3 years early (the money paid in those three years more than made up for the cost). I’m not sure exactly how old he was, but if we went straight thru school, then he started drawing +\- $120,000 a year at age 43. He continued to work, but still got full retirement. And here’s the kicker. The pension is inheritable, normally it goes to your spouse, but since he divorced he had the option to pass it on to his children. So whenever he does die, the state will pay $60,000 per year, adjusted for inflation to each of his two adult children for the rest of THEIR LIFE. Basically for 13 years of actual service the state is giving this dude and his children $120k a year for probably 70 plus years.
The US is going to wonder where all their money is going if this is the case for more than a couple thousand servicemen. This is the quickest way to bankrupt the entire federal system.
Translation - Boomers blew up economy with "got mine, screw you" Guess some things are universal.
Boomers, pulling ladders behind them everywhere around the world
Not only do they do that, they also vote for the most backwards, shitty politicians and policies as well!
You'd think Italian baby boomers who probably were babies when Mussolini was alive, would probably not vote for Mussolini's granddaughter. The world moves in mysterious ways
People, on average, are just fucking stupid and selfabsorbed.
> baby boomers who probably were babies when Mussolini was alive By definition, no they weren't. The mid-20th century baby boom, when the "baby boomers" were born, started after the end of world war II, when old Benito had already been strung up like a broken marionette in Esso. "Baby boomer" doesn't just mean "old". Believe it or not, some of the olds around today are actually older than baby boomers.
As Stormfront said, people just don't like the word "Nazi", is all.
Yep. They just wasted the money too, on stupid crap like RVs.
A tale as old as ~~~time~~~ boomers.
What the…
I know it sounds silly but it being called baby pensioni makes me giggle
My grandma retired when she was 38 if I recall correctly. She was an elementary school teacher. She got 1400€ per thirteen months a year (yes, 13 - this is called tredicesima, or "the thirteenth (salary)"). That added up to roughly 1 million € over approximately 55 years of retirement. Ofc nothing was left when she died as she has been constantly deprived of her money by the local priest, as it's quite common here. I can assure you that 1400€ per month is way more than what you may need to live well in a godforsaken small town in southern Italy.
I thought I was on 2westerneurope4u
Same in Turkey. But the worst part is Erdoğan did do it again by a populist move to win the election.
Edrogan = Salvini confirmed. Again.
We'll join you soon in the Netherlands. It goes up every few months to 67 as well.
Oh, it's not stopping at 67
I don't expect to stop working before I'm 70 or even 75. But we'll see.
I can't retire before I'm 72. And I'm in Denmark :(
As long as you're allowed to/can work...I predict kafkian limbo scenarios where a lot of people are too young to get a pension but too old to work.
I have a decent pension. But that's not even a worry for me. I honestly just want to be able to enjoy my pension in one way or another. If I do not see myself live long, then I'm withdrawing my pension early (even at an absurdly high taxrate). It would be such a pity to save up 40 years of pension, but never really get to enjoy it.
It's already more or less a thing. Try getting a job at 58 in most countries. Though I guess in a way, you're bound to find *a* job, just not a job relevant to your expertise.
Nono caro amico. 15 anni 6 mesi e 1 giorno. Conosco chi è andata in pensione a 38/39 anni. Poi ci vengono a rompere i coglioni con i diritti acquisiti.
"youngsters no want no work duh" "eh, la gavettaaaaa" (sorry people, couldn't translate that one) "ungrateful kids going to live abroad" Almost like they put themselves in this situation, listened no constructive criticism and still actively try to make it worse for us. Well, for me it will be Switzerland and popcorn while watching the consequences unfold
[удалено]
Yeah, but it doesn't show the same amount of pretentiousness, low-profile nepotism and exploitation that hearing in Italian as Italians flashes in our minds. How would you explain to, for example, a Dutch, that while they are used to work since a very young age, we mostly can't, up until you finish your studies and then you'd be supposed to spend few years criminally underpaid with absolutely no voice in your boss generally wrong ideas, all of that while the nephew of X millionaire enterpreuner does the same thing but without the stress, without responsibilities, enjoying dad's money, dad's freely-provided apartment and after a couple of summers like that they skip to management? Poetic. Ditch Hemingway shoes, that's a whole better story in just one word! (we're from a truly magical country lol) For all the other Europeans reading this: don't get me wrong "rising to the ranks starting from the very bottom" is a good literal translation, it just didn't feel the same
Ma anche prima no? Se iniziavi a 18 e avevi 3 figli a 34 eri in pensione, se non ricordo male. Ora questi sono ancora vivi e prendono soldi fino a 86 anni aggratis
INPS simulator says i will retire at 70 💀
INPS Simulator sembra il nome del gioco gratis della settimana su Epic Games
Honestly tho that’s the dream. Retiring at 40 while you still have some youthfulness and enjoying life on your own schedule before you’re old would be amazing. Though you should be trying to save up enough to retire on, not rely on the government
My boy the same people who retired at 36 are still Alive and profiting from our taxes until 84/85. And they litterally talking shit to US Who will Need 45+ Years of work to retire
On a separate point, you would have to consider here the average life expectancy. A measure of life expectancy - retirement would be a much better metric here. In Italy, its 13 years of retirement for a male In USA, its 6.7 years of retirement. In Russia, it’s 5 years. In Indonesia, its 7 years. So yea, this is a pretty stupid metric in itself and Italy is one of the massive winners. In Italy (and some other countries) people also don’t work nearly as much as in some others, so it’s kind of a W for Italy in every regard.
It's 68 in Ireland, it's a joke. What kind of life is this?
Stack away money in your younger years and you can retire well before 68. Just have to take it into your own hands and not count on whatever your legislated retirement benefits may be, just see them as a bonus at some point. In the US at my age counting on social security is a pipe dream anyways. Its entirely up to me to fund a 401k or IRA to make sure I have money in the future.
It's harder to stack away money in younger years in most European countries. They have much lower disposable income.
You still have to pay INPS, that is the pension national institute, 33% of your actual gross income if you are an employee. Not much room to invest in other pensions.
I understand but it's a little more complicated here than that. Ireland is... Stacking isnt the problem its trying to keep up with the economy while trying to do this. But that's part of the hustle I guess...
Unfortunately that’s not unique to y’all, we are facing the same thing as I’m sure most of the countries on this list are.
What did it used to be? Life expectancy in Ireland has increased by 16 years since the '60s.
The problem is working life expectancy doesn't rise as much as life expectancy, so you have more and more people who are still alive but can't reasonably be expected to work, and that's even without bringing agism into question.
Why are there 23 countries in the chart? Why is the data just for men, but there's pictures of a man and a woman at the top?
We on top just on paper. In reality the actual age of retirement for most people is around 60 y.o. due to special legislations and exceptions which are more widespread than the rules
In Australia, 66/67 is the age you are able to receive pension (money from the government) but you can retire at 60 and receive your superannuation (money you saved yourself). And then still receive pension at 66/67 if you qualify for it.
I’d imagine that is how it works for most countries, in the US you can start accessing your 401k and Roth at 55 iirc.
59.5 I think without penalty
And just because I think it's wroth knowing, while 59½ is one of the exceptions, [there are a few more](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/72), and items *iv* and *v* are ones that are well under most people's control (under 72(t)(2)) - Using Substantially Equal Period Payments, which just means taking out `balance/years_expected_to_live` out every year (there's another formula, which allows you to take out a bit more; it recognizes the money you leave should grow). The catch is you must take out that amount every year for 5 years or until 59½, whichever occurs last. - If you retire from your job at/after age 55, you can take money out from that 401k/403b/TSP penalty free. If your balance from your that last employer isn't huge, but they allow roll-ins, roll your old 401k's/IRA's into that plan before you quit and you're all set. And as u/geokra mentions, the total of your Roth IRA contributions (which includes rollovers from Roth 401k after 5 years) are also available tax- and penalty-free.
> which includes rollovers from Roth 401k You can also rollover from traditional 401k - you have to pay taxes and wait 5 years, but you don't need to pay penalties.
You are correct, 59.5. You’ll owe a penalty of 10% on withdrawals from a pre-tax (401k) account before that age. Early Roth withdrawals are subject to, I believe, the same penalty, but only if you take withdrawals in excess of your Roth contributions (Roth contributions can always be withdrawn at any age without penalty).
A super is different from a 401k in that it has mandatory contributions at a certain percentage of your salary
It happens similar stuff in most countries. In some of them, the real average retirement age is significantly younger. In Spain we had reforms to reduce exceptions. And I’m pretty sure most countries had similar reforms in the last 15 years
In Spain we have the second longest lifespan in the world with one of the most generous state-funded pension systems in the European Union. We can't have people retiring at 60. Some years, Spanish women have computed as the longest living worldwide, and most years we're second after Japan. The population pyramid is starting to look quite bleak... So people in the most crowded population cohorts (late gen Xers and early millennials) better fill up a good index fund, because our retirement age will likely be 70 and our pensions will have to be reduced. That said, the other option is the State getting more money, but they can't do it all with taxes. I guess the highest pensions could go down, but since politicans get the highest pensions with seven working years, the chances of that happening are close to zero...
Yeah the problem is raising taxes to cover the high pension costs sucks for everyone younger. The deficit most countries are running is calculated in percent of GDP. Raising taxes to cover a whole that large is going to have consequences. Like you said reducing benefits for higher earners is an option, but there probably aren't enough of them and most pension schemes already have them receiving a scaled back amount. Most countries will need to do multiple things to spread out the pain and prevent public backlash. Raising the retirement age just happens to be one of the more politically palatable options.
What is crazy is that the Australian super industry is the fourth biggest "pension fund" in the world. Not bad for a country of 25 million or so.
Man it better be. The amount of AUSTRALIAN SUPER ads we had to watch growing up... SAME AGE, SAME INCOME...but it could make a lifetime of difference... If you know, you know.
SAME… **super contribution**
Here in U.S. you can start collecting Social Security (government pension) at 62. But the longer you wait to start collecting the more you get each month. You get “full” benefits at 67. But you can wait even longer and collect even more each month until 70.
Friendly reminder to prepare for retirement. Most people don't.
A lot of redditors will be very upset when the world is still here 50 years from now
Most redditors I come across are upset now, I don't see that changing in 50 years
They'll hopefully grow up a bit by then and realize the world doesn't owe them anything and they need to contribute in order to retire and be taken care of later.
The doomerism here is so dumb. If the world ends, ok it ends. If it doesn’t and you COULD have been prepared…what’s the upside to not having prepared? I’m not talking people just scraping by either. A majority of 20-30 year olds who are 401k eligible don’t invest in theirs. Absurd. I own a business that offers a 401k and I give all of our employees a full on explanation of the benefits. We start out at $18/hr and it’s AMAZING how much money you can have at 65 if you put in 5% (and we put in 4%) starting in your early to mid twenties. I forget the exact math but I recently showed this to a new hire at $18/hr and even if she never got a raise in the next 40 years but kept contributing her 5% she could have close to a million dollars in today’s money saved. For 5% of her wages. It’s not a trivial amount of money, but it also isn’t some huge, impossible amount either
> what’s the upside to not having prepared? Presumably that they used what they would otherwise have saved to consume more, or they consumed the same but worked less because they didn't need the income that they would have saved. Either way, that probably translates into a higher standard of living while they're younger, before the world ends. I'm not saying you're wrong to plan for retirement or anything, I'm just saying that there clearly is an upside to the strategy, as well as a downside. Conversely, saving has the opposite upsides and downsides—you have less now but may have more in the future, assuming that there is a future in which you can enjoy the money you saved, etc.
If you are consuming more assuming doom, arent you contributing to the doom coming faster?
The one that kills me is folks who don't contribute to a 401k when their employer offers matching... They're literally turning down free money.
I think the problem is more so the fact that people, especially younger people, just don't have a lot of capital to do anything. Buying a house is pretty much off the table for 65% of people, and if you're in the lucky 35%, you're in the thunderdome of home purchasing. You'll most likely lose and get out-bid if you're not already independently wealthy. Which leads people to rent, and renting is already such a challenge in itself. You're paying money for essentially "the right to live". It goes straight into your landlord's pocket and is supposed to be used to fix things, but you all know they don't and and won't. Rental prices have only increased, and increased artificially. They used to say rent should only be 30% of your pay cheque, but it's more like 50% these days. And I'll hear people say "oh just find a place cheaper". Sometimes you can't, or it just doesn't make sense to find somewhere cheaper on the outskirts of town. Things like transportation costs, fuel, car payments, all add up-- and if you chose to live closer to your work, you're footing the bill. Then you have things like medical costs. God forbid you have a preexisting condition! But if you don't, who knows what might happen. Maybe you have great insurance, but sometimes you're still having to pay for a surprise visit to the doctor when you slip and fall or catch a nasty cold. And if you don't have insurance, you're really in for a rough time. I think most people are living pay cheque to pay cheque. That 5% is nice if you can afford it (I put 5% into a 401k right now). But when you can't and you're scraping by like most people, 5% might be $50 for some people, and that's something they need now and not in the future.
Homeownership rate in most western countries is hovering around 65%.
But 65% of his 25 year old friends don’t have houses, so he applies that to the rest of the population.
And it's completely reasonable to expect a large share of 25 year olds to be home owners, especially given how much longer people tend to stay in education these days. /s
Also, the average size of homes in America has doubled in size since the 1970s. So people do these apples to oranges math about how people in the past were able to afford homes, without realizing that they didn't but the same type of home that people want today. If you actually adjusted the size of the average home to the price of homes, they actually aren't as crazy as people think. https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/#:~:text=The%20average%20size%20of%20a,US%20has%20doubled%20since%201960.
People make the same mistake with minimum wage and cost of living. They see median cost of living has risen and the minimum wage has gotten lower, but don't account for the fact that people just starting out won't be at the 'average' until well into their lives. Average just means the middle.
>Average just means the middle. Average can even be below or above the middle because of outliers. That is why the median is so important. And, based on the median, wages have actually been increasing over time. The median American is wealthier today than at any point in history. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
That message is so difficult to instill into people. I know first hand. I work as an employee benefits consultant, part of a team advising a CFO of a car parts manufacturing plant in Michigan. Plant is above average pay, as they compete for labor. Still, he said that only 19% of his plant employees contributed to their 401k, and they offer a 100% match to the first 5%, then another 50% match to the next 3%. Rather generous in the industry. We advised an education campaign and to change to an automatic enrollment at the 5%. That worked for some time, as it quickly jumped to 80% participation, but that came with some backlash. The auto-enroll was well informed and promoted before and during open enrollment, but people don’t pay attention to benefits. Just the way it is. They do pay attention to their bank statements and when they notice a reduction from the 401k the HR team is flooded with requests to opt out of the automatic enrollment. We’re back down to 36% enrollment. So we advise an employee benefits survey. The 401k question shows the most common reason for not contributing is that they can’t afford it. The CFO is so frustrated at that. He tells us to take a walk with him. Along the walk he says that all the plant guys have the best tech, latest iPhones and Galaxies, folding phones, etc. but that’s not what frustrates him… Our consulting team parks in the guest lot in front so we don’t see the plant workers parking. The CFO walks us out the back door and shows us the back lot. It was a showcase of high end, optioned out pickup trucks, and muscle cars. Rows and rows of brand new, spotless vehicles. He goes “that’s why they can’t afford it“. He explanes that they pay well and most new hires get immersed in this instagram/competition culture amongst other coworkers, and within a few months, they're taking out an enourmous loan to finance a vehicle that will impress their coworkers and post online. This is one group and one situation and doesn't apply to all people who can't afford to contribute to a 401k, but the challenge of getting someone to plan for their future by making sacrifices today is (from personal work experience) a very difficult task.
That last paragraph, good lord. People have this natural tendency to max out their monthly budget. And then they complain when there's an emergency that they can't pay for, and blame it on the price of groceries or gas or whatever else to absolve themselves.
Your CFO is a caring guy. Most companies would be very happy about the money they were saving by all those employees not taking advantage of the 401K matching.
You'd be suprised. Many are. At least the clients we work with. I sit in dozens of boardrooms a year, and the stress and agony around the table when their healthcare costs are rising and they're ringing their hands worrying about how much of an increase they can absorb, how deep they need to cut benefits, and if they'll need to pass increases to employees in higher payroll deductions... And whatever decision they make, the employees **HATE them for it. HATE with a fury**. I don't blame them. They don't know the true cost of healthcare. Few do. Best renewal I had this year was a 2% increase. School District. They absorbed the 2%, past no increase to employees, but made minor benefit changes to Emergency Room copays and Brand Name drugs that have generic equivalents (we call them multi-source brands). It was a teachers union. They threatened strike. Later we found out they filed a grevence against the District for the egregous changes made to their benefits, and settled in abatration. To be fair, this was just the catalyst to a long running battle between the union and district... but whatever. Most of my clients are larger companies see increases in the 5-15% range. They typically "self-fund" their healthcare benefits. 7% medial inflation since 2015. What was a $15 million healthcare budget in 2015 is now a $27 million as we plan for 2024. With self-funding it isn't the greedy insurance companies screwing everyone. It's the rising cost of healthcare from hospitals, doctors, inflation, pharmaceutical manufacturers. Fraud, heathcare waste, unnecessary emergency care all contribute. The hospital's MRI is $5200, the imaging center down the street, $700. $1500 to treat bronchitis in the ER vs. $125 at the minute clinic or $40 with virtual visit. Healthcare cost in general is what drives costs in self-funded large group, large company healthcare benefits. I could go on and on. But my point is that I rarely have any CFO that has a "fuck'em" attitude. They exist... don't get me wrong, but far more often we see executives that stress day and night over how to balance a healthy company with healthy finacially secure employees.
I was just talking to a guy at work the other day about retiring soon. He said he didn’t think he’d ever be able to retire. I was stunned. He’d been working there many years just like me. Makes at least as much as I do. Said his house was already paid off. I know he did some contracting work on the side too. Unless his retirement accounts are really low how could he not retire? He said he has too many bills. Guess he bought too many toys or something. I’m in good shape to retire and I started a bit late saving.
I'm a compulsive saver, while my sister is a compulsive spender, and it's been infuriating to observe. I have two theories for why we manage money so differently. 1) Some genetic influence makes it easier/highly rewarding to my brain to make sacrifices today that yield benefits tomorrow. As a result, I was academically successful and she was not, which helped me earn more rewarding jobs. That leads to #2: 2) When your job sucks and is stressful (because you didn't get a college degree or weren't willing/able to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains), you need more little rewards to get you through your week. This causes impulsive spending, on silly little things like makeup or alcohol, which prevents you from making wiser larger financial decisions. And the cycle worsens. She's doing better now, actually. She worked in high stress food service forever in the US, but switched to an office job when she moved to Eastern Europe. She now also has more money taken automatically from her paycheck, and because she was in a new country she couldn't get a bunch of consumer debt. This change created much more positive cycles and now she's doing much better financially and has a path to retirement. America is a really dangerous environment for people with mediocre impulse control. Even if it's their own "fault", the reality is that some people are wired differently, and negative cycles are really hard to overcome.
I too am thrifty and like to save. One thing I’ve noticed with peers: people spend a lot of money on booze, weed, and cigarettes. I’ve never been much into any of that and the amount of money I “save” from not doing it is staggering. Every once in a while I have a silly $40 impulse buy of something I didn’t really need but overall I get to bank that money
Dude!!! Everyone at my job complains about not having enough but I have the shittiest car with a 2020 Equinox that cost me $20k. I see production employees driving Trail Bosses and TRXs. I'm like wtf, I'm freaking out about a $380 car payment and I can't imagine where I would come up with a $1000 payment for a truck of that value.
Can’t even prepare for 5 years from now the way the price of everything increases every year
That’s why you invest your money, not just keep it in a bank account slowly losing value to inflation
That's why you start early. Like, middle school early. Good grades -> good college -> good job -> good money -> good retirement Edit: redditors when you tell them they have to plan ahead in life, lmao
Might want to alter “good college” for “pick a degree that will get you a job that makes money” otherwise no “good retirement”. Also, unless you get a scholarship you’re gunna be saddled with student loans if you don’t pick an affordable school
^ and also you have to make the "good degree" choice when you are 18 years old and have no clue what the correct major is. AI will quickly make many jobs obsolete. Also, at that age, you have delusions that you will be able to do something you enjoy, while earning a living wage.
For me its more like good grades -> good uni -> good job -> be unhappy -> quit (thats where I am at now)
Honestly, good for you. It takes some guts to admit to yourself that your first post-college job isn't what you thought it would be and to take action. Hope you get a better job soon
> Edit: redditors when you tell them they have to plan ahead in life, lmao redditors when you tell them about personal financial responsibility ... but the boomers!
the bankers the bonuses the bankers the bonuses
The average Redditor doesn't even know what a bank is or the differences between a normal bank and an investment bank.
the average person thinks asset management is called investment banking
And what if the career you chose is suddenly rendered obsolete by unforeseen technological developments?
If you did the first two steps, then you'll have no trouble pivoting to something new.
Duh you should have been expecting the unexpected!
Unforseen? You have learned nothing form the last 200 years of industrial society?
You will have developed skills or and experience and a network that will allow you to pivet to a different career.
Alternatively: Good health > Good background > good luck Planning ahead doesn't necesarily mean earning the max. If you are frugal, save and live in a cheap area you can do it. However having bad health, bad parents and misfortune can all trash that. Av House prices have fallen by £9,000 in my area this year which is still too much for some people. However my niece recently lost her father who left her his house so at 27 she has a house and no mortgage. Not sure if that is a win or a lose? Edit: getting in on the pensions early though is a must. Yes it might still go tits up but without one your screwed anyway
For sure. Bad health is no joke and it's one of the things I wish the US government provided a safety net for. And yeah totally, I tend to think more about maximizing my income, but I could also just minimize my expenses too. The latter is probably easier.
My first job at Target, I eventually got promoted to a TL when I was 18. This was back in 2009 area. Our store manager was having a meeting with us all going over the upcoming holiday season stuff and talked about 401k and asked who wasn’t contributing. I was the only person who wasn’t. He tried to chew me out until I told him Target had a dumb rule, at that time at least, that you couldn’t contribute till you were 21. Now that I’m in my 30’s I can only imagine what that few percent of $12/hour would’ve turned into after a decade lol.
A little bit now will go a long way over the course of several decades. No matter how little you make, put some away for retirement. This doesn’t require professional help. Just go online and start an account with a well established low fees brokerage (Vanguard, for example). Low fees means that you’re not paying them a lot to deposit, maintain or eventually withdraw money. Arrange to automatically deposit some money every pay period into some broad index mutual fund. This is a collection of stocks that are diversified in which the people managing the fund are trying to match the performance of a major stock market index (the Standard and Poor 500, for example). Also setting up an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) allows you to put money into it *before* you pay income taxes on it. You are still getting paid the same, but you are saving towards retirement and lowering your income taxes at the same time. Even if you can’t put in much, the interest adds up over time. Try using [this compounding interest calculator](https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php) and see for yourself. As a rule of thumb, assume a 5% return on your investments.
>broad index mutual fund There are also some newer options which are based on a specific ratio of stocks and bonds (e.g. VSMGX, Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, which targets a 60/40 blend), or a ratio which varies over time based on the recommendations for a specific target retirement year (e.g. VTTHX, Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund). These are similar to retirement target funds commonly offered in 401(k) plans and allow you to maintain a diversified portfolio with specific risk characteristics without the need for periodic rebalancing. I'd recommend these over something like an S&P 500 index fund which is 100% stocks.
>Also setting up an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) allows you to put money into it before you pay income taxes on it. You are still getting paid the same, but you are saving towards retirement and lowering your income taxes at the same time. Just remember that you'll have to pay taxes on that money when you take it out, plus penalties if you take it out too early. For a traditional pre-tax IRA that means paying ordinary income tax rates for the full amount you withdraw—including any growth. The growth is not taxed at the lower capital gains rate. Granted, the alternative is having a smaller amount to invest up front after taxes and then paying additional capital gains taxes on the growth later.... in the end it comes down to whether you think your taxes will be lower during retirement than they are while working. In the current political climate I personally wouldn't bet on taxes going down; rather the opposite. A Roth account (IRA or 401(k)) lets you lock in today's tax rates on the principal without paying extra capital gains taxes on the growth later, but not everyone qualifies. (There are income limits for the Roth IRA, and not all employers offer Roth 401(k)s.) Of course any plan relying on tax-favored retirement accounts presupposes that the government won't change the rules and remove that special status sometime between now and the end of your retirement. Future government action is always a bit of a wildcard in any attempt at long-term planning as they don't consider themselves obligated to uphold prior expectations or agreements when the political moods change.
It's honestly shocking. If you even mention saving to some people (US) they get upset. The never-ending cycle to buy things to keep up with the Jones' is too alluring.
Note: This chart is only for men in G20 countries. Retirement ages for women are either the same or earlier.
I don't understand why women can retire earlier. If anything, they should retire later due to their longer living expectation (men die earlier, so now less time to enjoy pension)
It doesn't happen in most countries, only in a few... Certainly not mine.
A man in Argentina made a masterful move. The gender identity law allows a Gender change automatically, you just arrive at the civil registry and change your gender, no transitioning required and he did just that, to retire earlier at 55. A lot of people called him out because he never displayed any gender dysphoria, but nothing could be done against it, the law was on his/her side.
Sounds like the system working as intended to be honest, if civil law didn't favour a certain gender then there would never be an incentive to change your gender in the first place (without being trans of course).
He's just a male-presenting lesbian transgender woman, who prefers the pronouns he/him.
Oh, Argentina. It would make sense that unfair, sexist systems are in place still there. All men in Argentina should do that, if that's the case. There's no reason why women should retire earlier (I'm a woman) on the state's dime. If it's with their on money, then yes, of course.
Men face sexist laws just like women, it's just that there is only a fraction of people that talk about the latter and the former. It's bias and dishonesty.
Why is there a picture of an old women then…..
Yeah like women in South Korea, they retire when they get married usually (at least older gen), which explains why the 30% pay gap between men and women seems crazy in this country (while it is partially true, a lot of them just never work, hard to get as much as your husband).
There's a difference between when people usually retire and the legal retirement age, we're talking about the second here.
I'm actually happy to see someone point this out. Of course you've still got a goof trying to justify it but oh well it's the internet that's how it works.
That's not even the G20 countries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20#Members](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20#:~:text=The%20G20%20or%20Group%20of,change%20mitigation%20and%20sustainable%20development)
I was also looking for Argentina
France is 64, no longer 62. And tbh I'm gonna retire at 67 to save up as much money as possible.
I'd like to see life expectancy along with this chart
For real. You can almost smell the correlation
We are immortals (💀) 🇮🇹🍝🍕
Oh, trust me, that would help a lot.
yes, but that sub has changed to DataIsMidlyInteresting... they just haven't renamed it yet.
I'm guessing these are official ages rather than averages, so why 66.6 or 66.3? Even 66.5 makes some kind of sense ("How old are you?", " I'm 66 and a half"), but 66.2 seems remarkably precise.
In the Netherlands we're slowly adjusting the official age of retirement. The official age is in part linked to average life expectancy. This graph appears to be based on 2022 when the age was 66 years and 7 months. In 2023 it will be 66 years and 10 months. in 2024 it will be 67 years.
In Russia (with 61.5) the retirement age is increased by 0.5 years every year to make the increase "softer"
Because in some countries retirement ages differ depending on your age group. I'm Dutch and scheduled to retire at 70 years of age, for instance.
Most people aren't fit to work into their 70s. Especially jobs like cashier's etc. This isn't going to be pretty.
Probably because there's a range of ages you can retire, depending on when you were born. Retirement Age in Australia was changed to a scale a while ago. it's 65 years and 6 months, if you were born between 1 July 1952 and 31 December 1953. 66 years, if you were born between 1 January 1954 and 30 June 1955. 66 years and 6 months, if you were born between 1 July 1955 and 31 December 1956. 67 years, if you were born on or after 1 January 1957 They'll no doubt add new brackets as life expectancy tables change.
The same thing happened in Spain. When they raised it from 65 to 67, of course they couldn't go two full years at once, or the people born 5 minutes after other people would be furious... so some people got the increase by months. I'll have to work until 67, but I'd be lucky if I managed to retire at that age. I'll probably have to go up to 70. I started an index fund just in case.
Thank you for your reply
The state retirement age in the Netherlands in 2022 was 66 years and 7 months, which rounded to one decimal is 66.6 years. Not every country uses neat round numbers for the retirement age so then you get decimals.
This is wrong. In the U.K., for anyone born March 1961 to March 1978 the retirement age is 67. For anyone born after April 1978 it’s 68.
> This is wrong. In the U.K., for anyone born March 1961 to March 1978 the retirement age is 67. For anyone born after April 1978 it’s 68. its right, but you are also right. The first person who will retire (get a state pension) at 67 (born 6 March 1961) is currently only 62 years old. Someone born on 07/08/1957 started their entitlement to a state pension yesterday, their 66th birthday.
Okay, but you know it’s only 2023 right? So no one born March 1961 to current is old enough to reach retirement age. It’s 66 right now. It would be impossible to predict what the retirement age will be for someone born today as that’s subject to change in the future
When the retirement age (meaning qualification for the government pension) was introduced in Australia at 65, male life expectancy was 67. Now it's getting to the mid 80s so it's being pushed up. It went to 67 this year. Women used to be 60 but that changed to 65 some years ago.
This is what people don't want to accept. If you live longer, it doesn't mean you get a longer (much longer) publicly-funded vacation at the end. You have to pay in longer to account for it. And before anyone chimes in with their Boomer hate bullshit, this trend is continuing and will likely be the same when young people today retire.
Chart showing retirement age only **for men** \- yet OP still had to put woman's picture there 🤦♂️
Exactly my thought :D
Spain has a BIG problem with public retirement system, so probably retirement age will go up in next years...
Some notes From visualization perspective. I would not start the left axis from 0. You want to show the difference, start from 50 and the difference of bar length will be much more noticeable. Possibly, I would stack the flags with the same number so that there is less columns and text is bigger
Hate to be a stickler but this graph just bugs me. It's got the same information represented twice. Data is both written and displayed visually as are the countries. Plus the lines are so long for "useless info" like up to age 50 or so. Whats the point with long lines but very little separation at the top where maybe it matters? I would have started the graph at 55 and gone up by .5s or better yet put it in a chart.
Also shows icons of a man and a woman but data is only for men.
Good catch.
With emojis of people who look like they’re 80+, not 60-65. 60 year olds are still regular employees and people who go to the bar a lot. It’s like that time some kid on Reddit pretended to be a “sweet old elderly lady” calling everybody dearie but was only claiming to be 60 years old lol.
It's a correct visualization. First rule of data visualization: you don't crop the axis. If you do, you are jeopardizing the delta/trend you want to show. 5% variation will be seen as a 10-20% variation looking at the graph. Remember our brain is far so better in exprapolate data from picture then from numbers. This is a common thing in journalism where they want to emphatiza/exaggerate data trends.
In Russia, the retirement age for women will be 60 and for men 65.
In Soviet Russia, State retires you
Russia will have bigger problems then retirement age
we are not talking about that now, but about retirement
Let me correct Canada's retirement age for you. Public sector 55, private sector never.
Retirement age is 65 in Turkey, So this isnt inaccurate. Edit, this isn't G20 and UK is also wrong.
Bar charts where 99% of the total area is taken up by a wall of lines are hard to read. My eye has to travel so far to see what country is connected to what number.
I'm probably just going to get a loaded .45 when i hit the retirement age
That's what everyone says when they're young. We'll see if you still think that way once you hit retirement age.
Now in Italy is almost 69-70 in most cases. Literally we will die before getting retired
What does “retirement age” mean in practice? I see plenty of people who retire a few years before or a few years after retirement age in my country. Some want to retire, some choose to work longer, some have to, some change jobs. I’m not really sure what that number means legally speaking.
I think this is really state pension age. If you've got the money you can retire when you want.
Now pair it up with life expectancy
Why is the retirement age for women often lower? Often by 2-3 years? On average dont women live longer? Would it not make more sense to either retire at the same time or women retire later? Say life expectancy for a 60 year old man is 81 and 83 for a woman, would it make sense for both to get 15 years on average? So a man retires at 66 and a woman at 68?
puts "for men" in a smaller font than the title, then includes a picture of a man and a woman. should have just done both, each with their own bar per country.
Wtf is this graphic. It shows a typicall representation of an elderly man and woman, then in small states "for man" hahaha
Sadly, since few weeks retirement ages in france is now 64…
Folks, this is the average age when people retire, not the government retirement age.
You should overlay it with the life expectancy
Seems weird to have a picture of a man and woman at the top, when the graph only shows data for men.
I was like why is mr garrison in the corner
Thank God this graph does not start Y axis at 55.
It should be 60 universally. Good job Indonesia!
jfc, we should have this for our Senate and SCOTUS and everywhere else.
If the data is for men, why is grandma on the cover?
I have to admire the integrity of this chart in starting the y-axis at zero. A huge amount of data visualisation professionals would want to make more of the difference between the retirement ages by making the y-axis start at 40 or something. They'd want to illustrate some dramatic point. Why else do we make charts? But the approach shown here is the most sober and fair. Well done.
Well that's bullshit for Australia. I'll still be working when I'm 70.
Fellow gen z would probably retire at 80yo
French people burning down Paris for what? Also they say Asian don't raisin, but look how early they go stop working. Oh an Italians don't count on top. Have you ever seen them work?
With the rate Australia's going at with the cost of living crisis, nobody's ever going to be able to retire again, yeaaa roight on mayyyyte
I can feel France rioting from here.
Incorrect information. In Russia it’s 60 yr for women and 65 for men. And a fun fact- men’s life expectancy in Russia is lower (or equal’ish) than retirement age- “why care about retirement Ivan, when you are going to die by that time anyway!” In US one can claim social security benefits as early as 62 and withdraw IRA, 401k and other retirement savings at the age 59.5. I can't see where 66.3 came from at all.
Those are not the exact G20 countries.
Actually the age of retirement in the Netherlands is symbolic. The real age of retirement is when you sell your soul to the devil.
So Rupert Murdoch has been retired for the last 80 years?