CNN 2012-07-13

 It's a dream for a lot of Americans to retire at 65 and start living the good life. But the recession has now put that further out of reach for a lot of us. Alicia Munnell, she has just finished a study that says if we wait until we're 70 years old to retire, we've got a much better chance of having a good retirement 1. She's the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

 
 
 
And I have to say, professor, this is not the number we wanted to hear, 70. A little bit more time to work here. How did you come up with this? 
 
 
 
Well, I mean, the goal was actually to make people comfortable with the notion of working longer. Most people say, I don't want to work until my 90s. Since so we thought if we did a careful study showing how much longer it would have to be, it would seem manageable. So 70 is the age that will let people maintain the same standard of living they've had before they retired 2 once they've stopped working. 
 
 
 
And we hear a lot from retirement planners that you need pretty much $1 million to retire. What do you think of that figure? How does that relate to stopping at 70, working until you're 70?
 
 
 
So we really don't think in terms of an absolute dollar amount, because if you think about it, low income people don't need $1 million and high income people need a lot more than $1 million. So we think in terms of, what percent of your pre-retirement earnings 3 do you need. And that number we usually work with is around 80 percent. 
 
 
 
Eighty percent. OK. And the biggest retirement mistake that we make. Should we, what should we do? Should we take a lump sum from our employers or put it off? 
 
 
 
I think the biggest mistake that people make is grabbing their Social Security benefits as soon as they become available at age 62. If people can work until age 70, their monthly benefit will be 75 percent higher than it is at 62. And that give you just such a much larger secure base on which to build, to support yourself. 
 
 
 
If you were to stop working at 65, and retire at 65, instead of 70, would you be in danger of not living the way you're accustomed to? 
 
 
 
Yes, I, our estimates show that part, partly half of the households will not be able to maintain their standard of living if they retire at 65. So this moving from 65 to 70 brings that number up to 86, which we view close enough to the whole population. So if we could get the population as a whole to retire at 70, most people would be able to support themselves in retirement.
 
 
 
So bottom line, we just got to work a little bit longer now? 
 
 
 
We do. And we understand that not everybody can do it. Some people have health issues. Some people have spouses 4 with health issues. Some people's jobs are outdated 5. But for the great bulk of the population, working longer is really the way to have a secure retirement. 
 
 
 
All right. Well, we'll just keep working. Thank you, professor. Appreciate …