Older Americans share their retirement regrets.

“I should never have left that job and I should have continued working,” Rudd said, referring to his role as executive chef.

David John, senior strategic policy advisor at AARP, told BI that older Americans’ retirement expectations often don’t match reality. Even those who are preparing for retirement often don’t know when to do so or how to go about it financially.

“There’s the old adage, ‘Act with haste, repent at leisure,’ and that certainly seems to apply to a lot of these situations,” John said. “In practice, retirement is essentially a foreign country. We can read about it. We can talk about it. But until we achieve it, until we actually retire, we is not fully aware of reality.”

Misty Miller, 65, said she retired too early. A week later, she regretted it.

Miller worked as a paralegal and legal analyst in the private and public sectors before retiring at age 58 with approximately $700,000 in his retirement accounts. She lived modestly while working, driving the same car for 26 years and rarely spending on luxuries like going to a salon. She calculated her expenses for the following decades and retired with a monthly pension check of about $4,000. However, after retiring, she said her frugal habits disappeared.

The Sacramento resident withdrew money from her 401(k) for a down payment on a $515,000 beach house. She and her husband then sold the house in 2020 and moved to a $488,000 home in a Sacramento suburb, paying five times as much in property taxes as the first Sacramento property.

“I’m house rich and cash poor, so I had to go back to work,” Miller said. “Until now I lived frugally, then I just lost my mind.”

With those home purchases and other expenses reducing her retirement savings by about a third, to $450,000, Miller returned to work for the state, where she worked before retiring. She said she was worried her pension wouldn’t be able to cover all her expenses.

“I plan to keep working until they take me away in a coffin,” Miller said, adding that she wishes she never retired.

John at AARP said retirees make three common mistakes during the process. The first is withdrawing more than they should from their retirement investments, leaving them not enough money to meet their daily needs in the long term. The second is the opposite: work longer and save more than necessary, deprive yourself for fear of not having enough. The third was common among BI survey respondents: assuming they can put off financial decisions until it’s too late, doing things like delaying setting aside an emergency fund or rely too heavily on Social Security.

“They have to make certain decisions at an older age, and they find that they no longer have the flexibility, meaning the financial assets, to make those kinds of decisions,” John said.

Sharon, 77, signed up for Social Security too early, prompting him to skip retirement to cover his expenses.

The Atlanta resident, who asked to use her middle name for privacy reasons, worked as a teacher but retired in 2001 after a divorce and the death of her parents. She held a few temporary jobs in the 2000s and invested much of her inheritance in the market. When the market crashed in 2008, she lost nearly half of her $725,000 in assets.

“I became very afraid of the stock market, I was afraid of what to do, I didn’t trust the advice I was getting from people and I was making a lot of bad financial decisions,” Sharon said.

To get by, she took social security at age 62 instead of waiting until age 67. She said her financial situation deteriorated when she reached her 60s, so she returned to work as a teacher, earning “very little salary”. A series of health problems and home damage have meant that her $936 in Social Security each month hasn’t gone far, and she has less than $100,000 in cash flow.

“If only someone had just said, don’t take Social Security early, don’t invest your money that way,” Sharon said. “If I had someone who would have really managed me, maybe I wouldn’t be in this horrible situation because, by 2030, I will easily run out of money.”

John said about 22% of people had a financial plan before retirement, while only 33% had one after retirement. “People generally don’t do it, partly because they’re a little more comfortable with a vague worry than with concrete facts that they have to face,” John said.

For many older Americans, retirement mistakes aren’t about finances. Dozens of people told BI they returned to work after discovering retirement was lonely or monotonous. Although some view retirement as sitting on a beach or playing golf, John said many still long to return to the office.

“So many people have a social network that’s intertwined with their professional lives, and once they’re out of it, many people who are just older feel lonely and don’t participate in discussions anymore,” John said.

Some respondents, however, have a more positive view of how retirement has changed their social life. Many reported taking on passion projects and using retirement to focus on themselves and rediscover their passions.

Cindy Kohli, 64, has been on Social Security Disability Insurance since 1990 and receives Veterans Disability Compensation. For years, the Arizona resident got by as a single mother of three. She made financial mistakes, such as spending too much of her income, although she gradually developed money-saving strategies.

One of his biggest regrets, however, was not putting himself forward.

“I am the kind of person who has always put others first, never thinking about myself,” Kohli said. “There were times in my life when I never bought clothes, I didn’t take care of myself.”

During her retirement years, she learned to redefine her priorities. She spends hours each week reading financial books, doing pro bono paralegal work, and being active in her community.

“Oddly enough, my biggest challenge now is to rediscover my purpose because, in the past, I have helped people in every way possible,” Kohli said. “Many people complain that their limited income prevents them from getting around like they used to. In reality, they just have to adapt and find new activities.”

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