A Chapter in My Late Start Retirement Journey
People who reach financial freedom tend to want to retire as early as they can. People who haven’t reached the retirement savings they aimed for have little choice but to retire later. It’s a simple, obvious idea.
But when that simple idea became my own situation, it didn’t feel so simple. This post is a record of the research on the benefits of retiring later, and the downsides of early retirement, that eased my mind.
Comparing Myself
Last year, a coworker I’d worked alongside for a long time retired. He was two years older than me. As I watched him go, I caught myself measuring myself against him.
I soon realized the comparison never held up. His start was different, his path was different, and his circumstances were different. For him, retiring was natural and possible.
I’m preparing for retirement late, as an immigrant and the sole earner for my family. We weren’t running the same race from the same starting line.
Honestly, if I think of delaying retirement purely as a financial necessity, it isn’t a happy thought. Fortunately, I enjoy my profession and the work I do, so the pressure I feel about retiring late is fairly low. In my last post I wrote about the numbers I had to weigh between 62 and 70. This time it isn’t about numbers. It’s about the work itself.
The Benefits of Retiring Later Sounded Like Gospel
Then I came across a number of articles about the downsides of early retirement and the benefits of retiring later. To me they sounded like gospel, even giving my late retirement a kind of justification. If my health and eyesight allow, I should be able to enjoy my work even more.
I read six articles, but they described only three studies, because several outlets covered the same one. All six were Korean-language news reports, and the links are at the end. Here are the studies in chronological order.
One: Later retirement, lower mortality (Oregon State University, 2016)
Researchers at Oregon State University looked at when 2,956 Americans retired between 1992 and 2010, and when they died.
- Of 1,934 people who were healthy when they retired, 234 (12.1%) died before 2010.
- Of 1,022 people who retired because of health problems, 262 (25.6%) died.
- The average retirement ages of the two groups were 64.9 and 64.3.
The notable part came next. With other factors, including health, held equal, people who retired later had noticeably lower mortality. Among healthy retirees, those who retired one year later than the standard retirement age had 11% lower mortality than those who left right on time. Among retirees with health problems, one extra year was associated with 9% lower mortality. The pattern held regardless of sex, race, marital status, education, income, or occupation.
The researchers also compared people who retired before 61 to 62, around 65, and after 67 to 68. Those who retired late had clearly lower mortality than the around-65 group, while early retirees had clearly higher. They interpreted this as meaning that delaying retirement may slow physical and mental decline, and added that the effect could be stronger in countries where work is a central part of life. The study appeared in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Two: Later retirement, slower cognitive decline (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 2021)
A team at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research used data from the US Health and Retirement Study. Starting from the health information of 20,469 Americans aged 55 to 75 who worked between 1996 and 2014, they built a model to analyze what would happen if the retirement age were raised to 67.
Their finding was that the later people retired, the more slowly their cognition declined. The effect looked similar across social classes for most people, and it was strongest for the most highly educated group. The researchers suspected that career achievement and social engagement, accumulated over a lifetime, benefit cognitive function. The lead researcher, Angelo Lorenti, said that with many countries raising their statutory retirement ages, he had found the unexpected result that delaying retirement may help cognitive function. The study was published in a journal called Population Health.
Three: Early retirees declined faster (UC Davis, 2026)
In April 2026, a UC Davis team published a study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. It followed 321 community-dwelling older African American adults with an average age of 74.6. Of these, 87% were retired, and 66.5% of the retirees had left work before 65. The average retirement age was 57.7 for the early group and 67.9 for the later group.
The team followed them for a little over two years on average, assessing cognition up to three times about 16 months apart. At the start, there was no difference by retirement status or timing. Differences emerged over time.
- People who retired after 65 lost verbal memory more slowly than early retirees.
- People who kept working lost executive function (planning and judgment) more slowly than both retired groups.
The researchers’ explanation is that work keeps demanding higher-order thinking like problem solving and planning, while also sustaining social interaction and a daily routine. Those things may build what’s called cognitive reserve and slow age-related decline. Early retirement, on the other hand, can go along with financial stress and worsening physical and mental health, which may speed decline up.
One detail was interesting. Late retirees actually started with slightly lower cognitive scores, though the difference wasn’t statistically significant. The researchers raised the possibility that they kept working because of disadvantages like lower education, weaker finances, or chronic illness, or because of financial need and insufficient retirement savings. That part overlaps with my own situation.
A Caveat Before I Get Carried Away
Even though it sounded like gospel, none of this proves “work longer, live longer.” I want to be clear with myself about that.
First, all three are observational analyses of existing data. They are not experiments that assigned people to retire at different times. These studies alone can’t tell whether working longer made people healthier or whether being healthy let them keep working. The UC Davis team acknowledged its own limits. It couldn’t fully account for income and savings at retirement, health conditions like cardiovascular disease, or depression, and it had no information on job type or reason for retiring. Some early retirees may have left for health reasons, and some late retirees may have had cognitive decline they hadn’t noticed. The sample is also small and specific. One of the Korean headlines claimed that retiring later delays dementia, but the findings in that article were about slower cognitive decline, which is not the same thing.
Second, the benefit may come from what work provides rather than from work itself. Mental stimulation, social connection, a daily routine, a lifetime of career achievement. Both the Max Planck and UC Davis teams pointed in that direction, and the UC Davis researchers stressed the importance of environments that let people stay mentally and socially active after retirement. I think the more accurate reading is that late retirees get those things at work, while early retirees have to build them on their own.
What I’m Left With
One detail caught my eye. The Max Planck team modeled raising the retirement age to 67, the same age I once set, vaguely, as my own target. That doesn’t make 67 the right answer for me.
What I took from these articles isn’t a license to work until 70. It’s that the way I’d been thinking about retiring late, as a kind of penalty, has loosened. As long as my health and eyesight allow and I enjoy my work, working may not be a price paid for being underprepared. It may be a way of keeping my mind and body engaged and staying connected to people.
That’s no reason to stop preparing. If anything, it’s the opposite. Preparation is what turns a late retirement from something I have to do into something I choose.
Just as my coworker’s early retirement was right for him, my path only has to be right for me. I’ll keep doing my work today, and keep preparing so that I can say I chose this, not that I had to.