Porcentaje de quienes luego se arrepienten de cada elección. Las barras y el registro completo aparecen abajo.
Carrera
Última revisión 2026-04-26
Calidad de la evidencia 4.5/5
Puntuación de revisión en ocho dimensiones según la
rúbrica de calidad
. Cada dimensión puntuada de 1 a 5.
D1 Verificación de fuentes
5/5
D2 Autoridad e independencia de las fuentes
5/5
D3 Precisión de la tasa de arrepentimiento
3/5
D4 Comparabilidad de las fuentes
5/5
D5 Patrón de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Calidad de la prosa
5/5
D7 Completitud de las advertencias
4/5
D8 Calidad de la muestra
4/5
Media4.5/5
Datos sustitutos — no existe ninguna encuesta directa sobre el arrepentimiento para esta decisión. Las tasas se derivan de puntuaciones de satisfacción y datos de barreras de acceso en lugar de preguntas que preguntaban directamente sobre el arrepentimiento. Ver advertencias más abajo.
Arrepentimiento por acción
Jubilarse pronto
20%
20% de los jubilados anticipados se arrepiente de la decisión
Estadounidenses autoreportados como jubilados
retrospectivo, jubilados 5+ años
Arrepentimiento por inacción
Trabajar más tiempo
5,0%
6% se arrepiente de trabajar demasiado tiempo
Estadounidenses autoreportados como jubilados
retrospectivo, jubilados 5+ años
% que se arrepienten de esta elección
Jubilarse prontoTrabajar más tiempo
20%5,0%
action dominates — Domina la acción — la mayoría se arrepiente de actuar.
Decisiones relacionadas
Decisiones semánticamente similares — mismo terreno, distintos compromisos.
20% of early retirees regret their decision to stop working,
according to a MedicareFAQ survey of 569 retired Americans (“74% say
they were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that
decision”). The mirror side — regret about working too long — is much
rarer, but no US survey measures it directly, so this pair is proxy-
graded: a UK Which? survey (May 2025, n=1,188) found roughly 5% felt
they had retired too late, “half as many” as the ~10% who felt they had
stopped work too early. Even at that rough level, action (retiring
early) generates more regret than inaction (continuing to work),
reversing the typical Gilovich pattern. The reason on the action side is
almost entirely financial — 86% of the MedicareFAQ respondents wished
they had saved more, and 75% of early retirees in a separate Manulife
study said they regretted not saving enough.
Hurwitz and Mitchell (NBER Working Paper 30696, 2022) sharpen the
direction of retirement-timing regret with a controlled experiment of
1,764 Americans aged 50 and older. In their sample, 37% regretted not
working longer and 57% regretted not saving more — both point the
same way as the MedicareFAQ finding: the dominant timing regret is
retiring too early, not too late. (This 37% is NBER’s figure; the
MedicareFAQ article itself does not report a “worked longer” number.)
Börsch-Supan et al. (2023) reinforce the underlying cause: 58.5% of
those aged 60-79 wished they had saved more. Working longer is often a
proxy for the saving people failed to do, which is why “I should have
worked longer” and “I should have saved more” track together.
The action-dominates pattern here is unusual in the Gilovich framework,
where inaction typically wins long-term. The explanation is that early
retirement is not a pure inaction-vs-action binary — it is an
irreversible action with immediate, concrete financial consequences.
People who retire early and run short of money experience the sharp,
specific regret characteristic of action errors. People who work “too
long” experience a diffuse, hard-to-quantify opportunity cost (lost
leisure years), which is easier to rationalize. The low working-too-long
rate may also reflect survivorship bias: those who worked until health
failed may not be surveyed.
Fuentes: acción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
1/3 fuentes verificadas de forma independiente palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada
[1]MedicareFAQ — Retirement Regrets Statistics: Advice for the Next Generation
Estudio primario
74% were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that decision
Extracto
“"Among survey respondents, 74% say they were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that decision. The majority (86%) wish they would have saved more before retiring, and 60% say they did not start investing in their retirement funds early enough."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2024-02-19
Accedido
2026-04-26
Cálculo
MedicareFAQ surveyed 569 retired Americans (online, self-selected) in January 2024. Sample: 65% female, 35% male, ages 27-90 (average 65), average retirement age 58. The archived article (Wayback snapshot 2024-11-14) states verbatim: "74% say they were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that decision" — this grounds the 20% action rate. The live URL was later revised to remove the retirement-regret content, so the excerpt above is verified against that archived snapshot. The article does NOT report any "34% wished they had worked longer" or "6% regret working too long" figure — earlier drafts of this entry misattributed those to MedicareFAQ; the working-longer regret figure belongs to NBER w30696 (see below).
[2]National Bureau of Economic Research / Hurwitz & Mitchell — Financial Regret at Older Ages and Longevity Awareness↗ 1 other entry
Revisado por pares
37% of respondents aged 50+ regretted not working longer; 57% regretted not saving more
Extracto
“"57% regretted not saving more for retirement, 40% regretted not purchasing Long-Term Care insurance, 37% regretted not working longer, 33% regretted not buying lifetime income payments, 23% regretted delaying Social Security benefit claims, and 10% expressed regret about financial dependence on others."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2022-11-01
Accedido
2026-04-26
Cálculo
Hurwitz & Mitchell, NBER Working Paper 30696 (2022, revised 2023; published in Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2025). Controlled randomized experiment of 1,764 respondents aged 50+. The full list of stated regret rates — 57% not saving more, 40% not buying LTC insurance, 37% not working longer, 33% not buying lifetime income, 23% delaying Social Security, 10% financial dependence — was verified via Knowledge@Wharton's summary of the paper. This is the sole cited source for the "wished they had worked longer" dimension; it is a regret about NOT working longer (i.e. retiring too early), which supports the action-side (early-retirement) regret, not the inaction side.
[3]Manulife John Hancock Retirement (11th Financial Resilience and Longevity Report) — Manulife John Hancock Releases New Retirement Report with Insights on Preparing for a Better 40-Year Retirement Journey
Verificado
Estudio primario
75% of retirees who retired earlier than expected said they regretted not saving more for retirement
Extracto
“"75% of those retiring earlier than expected reported that they regretted not saving more for retirement."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2025-11-18
Accedido
2026-07-04
Verificación
Extracto recuperado de forma independiente y confirmado palabra por palabra frente a la fuente citada durante nuestra auditoría de fundamentación.
Cálculo
Manulife John Hancock Retirement's 11th annual Financial Resilience and Longevity Report, fielded May 9-June 2, 2025 among 2,534 retirement-plan participants plus a 512-person American-retiree panel via Angus Reid, commissioned research conducted by Edelman Public Relations Worldwide Canada Inc. Independent third-survey corroboration that early/unplanned retirees specifically show an even higher savings-regret rate than retirees overall (MedicareFAQ 86%, NBER 57%). Grounds the body-text "separate Manulife study" claim.
Fuentes: inacción
Registro de evidencia
Cada número a continuación es lo que reportó cada fuente, con la cita textual en la que nos basamos y cómo llegamos a nuestra cifra. Haz clic en cualquier enlace para verificarlo directamente.
[1]Which? — The 4 biggest retirement regrets and how to avoid them
Fuente de referencia
Around 1 in 10 felt they stopped work too early; half as many (~5%) felt they had retired too late
Extracto
“"Around one in 10 people in our survey told us they felt they stopped work too early, while half as many said they felt they had retired too late."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2025-05-01
Accedido
2026-07-12
Cálculo
Which? surveyed 1,188 retired and semi-retired UK members in May 2025. "Retired too late" is the closest surveyed analogue to "regret working too long" (the inaction side of this pair). The stated figure is "half as many" as the ~10% who felt they retired too early, i.e. ~5%. This is a proxy: it is a UK sample, and the rate is stated as a fraction ("half as many"), not a precise percentage — hence proxy_only:true. No cited US survey reports a direct "regret working too long" rate; MedicareFAQ (US) measured early-retirement regret but never this direction (an earlier draft misattributed a fabricated 6% to it).
[2]PMC / Börsch-Supan et al. — Saving Regret and Procrastination↗ 2 other entries
Revisado por pares
58.5% of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more
Extracto
“"58.5 percent of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more."
”
Datos de la fuente de
2023-02-15
Accedido
2026-04-25
Cálculo
Börsch-Supan, Bucher-Koenen, Hurd & Rohwedder, "Saving Regret and Procrastination." Peer-reviewed study measuring SAVING regret only (58.5% of ages 60-79 wished they had saved more). It does NOT report a retirement-timing / working-too-long regret rate; it is cited here to establish that the dominant retirement regret is financial (undersaving), which contextualises why the timing-of- retirement inaction rate is low and why the pair is proxy-graded.
Advertencias
La muestra MedicareFAQ está autoseleccionada (encuesta en línea de personas que visitan un sitio de información Medicare) y se inclina hacia mayores y mujeres. La edad promedio de jubilación de 58 años está por debajo de la mediana estadounidense, lo que significa que la muestra sobrerrepresenta a jubilados anticipados. La tasa del 20% de arrepentimiento por jubilación anticipada probablemente refleja la falta de preparación financiera más que una preferencia genuina por el empleo continuado — el 86% de los encuestados también deseaba haber ahorrado más. Los jubilados anticipados involuntarios (problemas de salud, despidos) se confunden con los voluntarios. El 6% de arrepentimiento por trabajar demasiado tiempo también puede estar suprimido por el sesgo de supervivencia: las personas que trabajaron hasta no poder hacerlo físicamente pueden no estar lo suficientemente bien para participar en encuestas. Los datos de encuesta provienen exclusivamente de muestras estadounidenses; las tasas de arrepentimiento en países con sistemas de jubilación diferentes — estructuras 401(k), reglas de Seguridad Social, normas pensionales o derechos sanitarios — pueden diferir sustancialmente.
