Andare in pensione anticipatamente vs. lavorare più a lungo
Se agisci
Andare in pensione presto
20%
Se non agisci
Lavorare più a lungo
5,0%
Percentuale di chi poi rimpiange ciascuna scelta. Le barre e il registro completo dei dati compaiono sotto.
Carriera
Ultima revisione 2026-04-26
Qualità delle prove 4.5/5
Punteggio di revisione su otto dimensioni rispetto alla
griglia di qualità
. Ogni dimensione valutata da 1 a 5.
D1 Verifica delle fonti
5/5
D2 Autorità e indipendenza delle fonti
5/5
D3 Precisione del tasso di rimpianto
3/5
D4 Comparabilità delle fonti
5/5
D5 Schema di Gilovich
5/5
D6 Qualità della prosa
5/5
D7 Completezza degli avvertimenti
4/5
D8 Qualità del campione
4/5
Media4.5/5
Dati proxy — non esiste alcun sondaggio diretto sul rimpianto per questa decisione. I tassi sono derivati da punteggi di soddisfazione e dati sulle barriere di accesso piuttosto che da domande che chiedevano direttamente del rimpianto. Vedi avvertenze di seguito.
Rimpianto per azione
Andare in pensione presto
20%
Il 20% dei pensionati precoci si pente della decisione
Americani statunitensi auto-riferiti come pensionati
retrospettivo, in pensione 5+ anni
Rimpianto per inazione
Lavorare più a lungo
5,0%
Il 6% si pente di aver lavorato troppo a lungo
Americani statunitensi auto-riferiti come pensionati
retrospettivo, in pensione 5+ anni
% rimpiange questa scelta
Andare in pensione prestoLavorare più a lungo
20%5,0%
action dominates — L'azione domina — la maggior parte si pente di aver agito.
Decisioni correlate
Decisioni semanticamente simili — stesso terreno, compromessi diversi.
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.
Fonti: azione
Registro delle fonti
Ogni numero qui sotto è ciò che ciascuna fonte ha riportato, con la citazione testuale su cui ci siamo basati e come siamo arrivati alla nostra cifra. Clicca su qualsiasi link per verificare direttamente.
1/3 fonti verificate in modo indipendente e alla lettera rispetto alla fonte citata
[1]MedicareFAQ — Retirement Regrets Statistics: Advice for the Next Generation
Studio primario
74% were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that decision
Estratto
“"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."
”
Dati originali da
2024-02-19
Consultato
2026-04-26
Calcolo
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
Articolo peer-reviewed
37% of respondents aged 50+ regretted not working longer; 57% regretted not saving more
Estratto
“"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."
”
Dati originali da
2022-11-01
Consultato
2026-04-26
Calcolo
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
Verificato
Studio primario
75% of retirees who retired earlier than expected said they regretted not saving more for retirement
Estratto
“"75% of those retiring earlier than expected reported that they regretted not saving more for retirement."
”
Dati originali da
2025-11-18
Consultato
2026-07-04
Verifica
Estratto recuperato in modo indipendente e confermato parola per parola rispetto alla fonte citata durante il nostro audit di attendibilità.
Calcolo
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.
Fonti: inazione
Registro delle fonti
Ogni numero qui sotto è ciò che ciascuna fonte ha riportato, con la citazione testuale su cui ci siamo basati e come siamo arrivati alla nostra cifra. Clicca su qualsiasi link per verificare direttamente.
[1]Which? — The 4 biggest retirement regrets and how to avoid them
Fonte di riferimento
Around 1 in 10 felt they stopped work too early; half as many (~5%) felt they had retired too late
Estratto
“"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."
”
Dati originali da
2025-05-01
Consultato
2026-07-12
Calcolo
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
Articolo peer-reviewed
58.5% of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more
Estratto
“"58.5 percent of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more."
”
Dati originali da
2023-02-15
Consultato
2026-04-25
Calcolo
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.
Avvertenze
Il campione MedicareFAQ è auto-selezionato (indagine online di persone che visitano un sito di informazioni Medicare) e tende verso anziani e femmine. L'età media di pensionamento di 58 è inferiore alla mediana statunitense, il che significa che il campione sovrarappresenta i pensionati precoci. Il tasso del 20% di rimpianto per il pensionamento precoce probabilmente riflette l'impreparazione finanziaria più che una vera preferenza per il lavoro continuato — l'86% degli intervistati avrebbe anche voluto aver risparmiato di più. I pensionati precoci involontari (problemi di salute, licenziamenti) sono confusi con quelli volontari. Il 6% di rimpianto per aver lavorato troppo a lungo può anche essere soppresso dal bias di sopravvivenza: le persone che hanno lavorato fino a quando non erano più fisicamente in grado potrebbero non essere abbastanza bene per partecipare alle indagini. I dati delle indagini provengono esclusivamente da campioni statunitensi; i tassi di rimpianto in paesi con sistemi pensionistici diversi — strutture 401(k), regole della Sicurezza Sociale, norme pensionistiche o diritti sanitari — possono differire sostanzialmente.
