At what age do you want to retire, and at what age do you believe you'll actually be able to retire?

I'm planning for 59 so I still have some active travel time available. I think I can do it financially...the question for me is whether I can stay busy enough to avoid the boredom trap.

CPT (Join to see)-Great question to the community. I will be 38 when I retire from the Army, and I plan to be fully retired as all working operations will cease for me at age 50.

I am a member of the check of the month club but at 52 my wife and I are starting to look seriously at this question. I think we are in that time from 63 to 67. Not much latter and maybe partial retirement earlier if something happens in this gig. We have our 401Ks primarily, some ROTH IRAs, and I believe Social Security will still be around in some form. Both of us have documented social security withholdings since we were 13.

I was 62. Retired 19 days after turning 62.

Waiting until you can afford to retire is the same as waiting until you can afford to get married or to have kids. Most never have enough.

If you want enough (whatever figure that is for you) you must plan and start working toward that goal early in your working career.

If you are planning on social security being enough to retire, be prepared to have a meager retirement.

I don't have an age, I'm pretty much set for the long haul on the army, my ultimate goal is to retire at least a O-7 (setting the bar high) or until the army no longer needs my service. Which ever comes first, by the time of 65 I want to be comfortable with where I'm at.

I planned on retiring at 72. Retired at 65. Forced into it by the economy. One of the most valuable lessons I learned is that no one can ever save enough to live comfortably when they retire unless they die prematurely. Thus, my advice is to ignore the size of your savings and focus on the size of your retirement income. No, I'm not talking about the interest on your savings principle. I'm talking about income producing investments. Rental property (the best). Income producing stocks. Income producing activities in which you can reasonably engage after retiring (not writing. I've tried that one and out of the thousands of authors contributing new titles to Amazon Kindle every month, less than a dozen are earning any significant income)

You can never start planning too early. I retired from the Army in 2011 a few days after I turned 40. I started contributing to the TSP as soon as service members were allowed, but had to pull about 15k out to cover a short fall in the sale of my house in Syracuse, NY. I worked a few different jobs predominantly in IT and telecommunications until I became a County Veterans Service Officer. My plan right now is to do that for a total of 20 years which will put me at age 64.

Shortly before I started this job I began two different one page information sheets for my wife and I. One outlines all life insurance, retirement accounts, etc. in case of death along with account numbers and contact information for each. The other is a retirement sheet showing calculated estimates for various pensions, IRAs, and assets/liabilities based upon the prior year. We update these at the same time we do our taxes because we are going over almost all of the same information anyway. I find these sheets to be really valuable in staying on top of planning. In addition to and IRA for each of us, I started a deferred compensation (457 plan) through my work and half of each new pay raise gets diverted into it.

So long as things don't change drastically for us we could afford for me to retire at 55, but I love my job too much to do that and I would be too bored. Working till 64 and staying reasonably frugal should set us up well for a happy retirement. I also plan to follow in one of my uncle's footsteps. One works weekends at a golf course and golfs during the week for free. Another works for Delta two mornings a week and he and my aunt fly anywhere for free.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll retire from the military at 39, and I’ll continue to work until I physically cannot anymore. I have zero issues with working my entire life, I’ve always said I’d rather work hard and earn my paycheck, then sit at home and collect money from what I did in the past.

I "retired' from my civilian teaching job at age 65, still to work part-time as a sub teacher. I dont need the money but I like being semi-retired, active but with the flexibility of doing other things such a travel when I want to do them.

I planned on 52 and ended up retiring at 52.5. So I was only off by 6 months. But I started my first IRA when I was 18.

The earlier you start planning your retirement, the better.