There are about 3.9m retirees in Australia today so it’s not surprising that their reasons for retiring are many and varied.  Some retire through choice and others find they have retirement forced upon them. We hear lots of reasons when we are helping our customers including:

  • To escape from onerous work
  • To enjoy the fruits of my labour
  • Because I lost my job and couldn’t find another
  • Health concerns
  • and many others

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a report in 2020 entitled Retirement and Retirement Intentions. This report summarised some of their research to better understand why people retire.

The most common reasons people retired were:

  • They were eligible for their superannuation or had reached age pension age (46%)
  • Health reasons such as sickness, injury or disability (21%)
  • They were retrenched or dismissed and couldn’t find further work (11%)

There were some gender disparities as well with women four times more likely than men to have left employment to care for a sick or elderly relative.

We would love for you to help us better understand the reasons why Australians retire. If you have 2-3 minutes to spare you could do so by completing this short survey which you can find here.  You could also make a comment below.