The best reasons to retire (at age 60 or 62 or 65) are positive visions of the life you want in your retirement years. These often include more time for travelling, pursuing hobbies, spending more time with family and friends.

Retirement is not one phase of life but a transition into multiple phases of life especially with today’s increased life expectancy of 15-20 years or more; enough to start a new career. While some need to work after retirement to support their family, it is also an opportunity to pursue one’s interests & hobbies that had been put on the back burner during working life. The multiple phases spread over planning, contentment, disenchantment which is associated with emotional downsides such as loneliness, disillusionments, feeling of uselessness especially when you are experiencing failing health. As retirement life becomes more familiar, people in this phase tend to accept this situation and settle into a new set of routines generating a fresh sense of purpose and opportunity to enjoy life.