Your Parents Retired at 60 — Why Does That Feel Impossible for So Many Workers Today?

Retiring at 60 depends on more than a retirement account balance. Pension income, housing costs, healthcare coverage, and the years before Social Security benefits begin can all shape when workers can afford to leave their jobs – Shutterstock

Your parents might have celebrated their 60th birthday by planning a fishing trip, not another decade of work. Today, plenty of workers approaching that age are still calculating mortgage payments, juggling retirement accounts, and wondering whether they can afford to stop working at all.

The difference isn’t simply that everything costs more. The rules of the retirement game have changed, too. Employer pensions have become less common in the private sector, workers shoulder more responsibility for investing, and housing expenses can follow people well into their later years. Meanwhile, retiring at 60 could mean funding decades without a paycheck.