When should you retire?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you decided when you'd like to retire? Will it be your choice, or is there a set age in your country or profession?

More than a million people took part in protests in France last year when the government proposed an increase to the retirement age without a vote.

Age has also played a big factor in the replacement of Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate.

So is a fixed retirement age a good idea – or workplace outdated? Should it be more fluid – a matter of personal choice?

Presenter: David Harper Producer: Victoria Hastings

(Image: Two women holding up placards that read, '64years it's no' march during a nation wide strike called for by French trade unions, in Rennes, northwest France on January 19, 2023. Credit: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm David Harper and this is Business Daily, a BBC World Service programme dealing with the world of work.
0:07.1	But today we're talking about the idea of not working at all.
0:10.9	And it's a much more complicated subject than you might think.
0:13.8	That is a sound that's been heard in news bulletins more than a few times in recent years,
0:20.4	people taking to the streets to voice their feelings about changes to the state retirement age.
0:25.5	This was in France last year when more than a million people took part in weeks of protests
0:30.3	when the government proposed raising the cutoff from 62 to 64. And this is at a time when many
0:36.4	European countries already have a retirement age of 67.
0:40.5	And if being told when you can retire is controversial, telling people that you don't want to
0:45.3	can make headlines too. How old is too old for a top job?
0:49.2	I am a young, vibrant man. I look at Joe. I don't know about him. If he looks young and vibrant
0:57.6	compared to me, I should probably go home. While Joe Biden was happy to keep working well into his
1:02.8	80s, it turned out that some of his colleagues in the U.S. Democratic Party were not. So is it a good
1:08.3	idea to retire as soon as you can, or other more benefits to staying
1:12.1	in work longer? And is the idea of one fixed retirement age a little bit outdated in the future
1:19.1	should it be more fluid, a matter of personal choice? Now, if I'm being honest, retirement
1:25.4	was something that I hadn't considered all that much.
1:28.1	I thought it was something I wouldn't have to think about for a few decades at least.
1:32.4	That was until I spoke to a couple from the US who are followers of the fire principle.
1:37.4	Financial Independence, retire early.
1:40.6	I'm Alison. I retired early with my wife, Ali, in 2018. Currently, we live in Northern
1:46.8	Arizona, enjoying a retired lifestyle. I was 54. I'm now 60. I was 44 and I am 49. Which is quite
	...

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