Forget about leaving the workforce at age 63.
"70 is the new retirement age," personal finance maven Suze Orman writes on Money. "Not a month or year before."
She points out that Americans are living longer, meaning your retirement savings need to last longer: "You likely have plenty saved up to breeze through 15 years or so of retirement. But, people, if you stop working in your 60s, your retirement stash might need to support you for 30 years, not 15."
Plus, health-care costs add up, she notes. Fidelity estimates that a healthy, 65-year-old couple retiring in 2017 will need a whopping $275,000 to cover their health-care costs in retirement.
Ultimately, if you want a secure retirement, says Orman, start thinking about how you can prepare now to work longer later: "Every dollar you don't spend in your 60s is a dollar that can keep growing for your 70s and beyond. So I want each and every one of you to make working until 70 (or later) your goal."
And, if you're not doing so already, put your money to work.
Having a comfortable retirement is all about using compound interest now, Orman said at Miami's eMerge conference in June: "You invest money and your money makes money, and the money you made with the money that you had makes money, and everything compounds."
Orman explained that if a 25-year-old puts $100 into a Roth IRA each month, they could have $1 million by retirement. But if that same person waits 10 years to start investing, they'll end up with only $300,000.
Waiting means blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be made by simply letting your money sit and accumulate interest.
The bottom line: Don't put retirement on the back burner. Doing so may push your end date back even more.
If you need inspiration to kick-start your savings goals, check out:
- How to save for retirement without going broke
- New study says save at least 11% of your income for retirement—here are 5 ways to do that
- Everything you need to know about 401(k)'s, IRAs and other retirement savings accounts
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