Retirement Worries and Expectations Around the World

[CanuckExpat]

From a survey of 15,000 people: Anxiety about retirement is a global phenomenon

[ender]

That's actually interesting.

I'd be very curious to see those over time, too.

[Bloop Bloop]

People say they are anxious about retiring yet they live far beyond their means.

I can sympathise with low income earners whose anxiety is real and who may not have the ability (extreme frugality aside) to properly plan for a retirement.

But middle-income earners have every ability to save - the only excuse is medical/health expenses - yet they so often choose not to. I have no sympathy there. There is a cure to your anxiety and that is to live within your means.

(I have nothing against lavish or profligate spending - if you can afford it. I'm not trying to say that no one should be buying luxury goods. That is something you can do if you earn the money to afford it.)

[denverd1]

Very interesting. I'd like to see the US broken down into 6 or 8 regions. Here in the south, most folks would rather buy beer than save.

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[scantee]

It would be interesting to know how country-level policies impact how individual respondents answer this question. For example, in the Netherlands there appears to be a mandatory retirement age of 67, which is probably why the expected retirement age is 66.9! That situation seems different than that of the US where respondents may be more likely to state their desired retirement age as their expected retirement age.

Similarly, that the US only had 30% of respondents say that they do not enjoy the same standard of living as when working seems quite low to me, on first glance. But there is likely selection bias going on here because the question is only asked of people with the means to retire, it doesn’t account for the people of retirement age who are still working out of necessity.

Overall, some interesting findings. Thanks for sharing!

[mozar]

I'd like to know what the actual average retirement age is by country. Do you have that?

[fuzzy math]

I am surprised that the US does not score extremely poorly on any category. Only 30% here do not share the same standard of living? Were they eating cat food during their working years too?  It makes me wonder what is going on in Spain and France that the anxiety is worse or standard of living is much poorer.