Percentage dat later spijt heeft van elke keuze. De balken en het volledige overzicht staan hieronder.
Carrière
Laatst beoordeeld 2026-04-26
Kwaliteit van bewijs 4.5/5
Beoordelingsscore op acht dimensies volgens de
kwaliteitsrubriek
. Elke dimensie krijgt een score van 1 tot 5.
D1 Bronverificatie
5/5
D2 Autoriteit en onafhankelijkheid van bronnen
5/5
D3 Nauwkeurigheid van spijtcijfer
3/5
D4 Vergelijkbaarheid van bronnen
5/5
D5 Gilovich-patroon
5/5
D6 Prozakwaliteit
5/5
D7 Volledigheid van voorbehouden
4/5
D8 Steekproefkwaliteit
4/5
Gemiddelde4.5/5
Proxygegevens — er bestaat geen directe spijtenquête voor deze beslissing. De percentages zijn afgeleid van tevredenheidsscores en toegangsdrempelgegevens in plaats van vragen die direct naar spijt vroegen. Zie opmerkingen hieronder.
Spijt van handelen
Vervroegd met pensioen gaan
20%
20% van vroege gepensioneerden hebben spijt van de beslissing
Amerikaanse zelfgerapporteerde gepensioneerde Amerikanen
retrospectief, 5+ jaar gepensioneerd
Spijt van nalaten
Langer doorwerken
5,0%
6% hebben spijt van te lang werken
Amerikaanse zelfgerapporteerde gepensioneerde Amerikanen
retrospectief, 5+ jaar gepensioneerd
% betreurt deze keuze
Vervroegd met pensioen gaanLanger doorwerken
20%5,0%
action dominates — Handelen domineert — de meesten hebben spijt dat ze handelden.
Gerelateerde keuzes
Semantisch vergelijkbare keuzes — zelfde terrein, andere afwegingen.
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.
Bronnen: handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
1/3 bronnen onafhankelijk woordelijk geverifieerd tegenover de geciteerde bron
[1]MedicareFAQ — Retirement Regrets Statistics: Advice for the Next Generation
Primaire studie
74% were able to retire early, but of those who did, 20% regret that decision
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-02-19
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-26
Berekening
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
Vakgenoten-beoordeeld
37% of respondents aged 50+ regretted not working longer; 57% regretted not saving more
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2022-11-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-26
Berekening
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
Geverifieerd
Primaire studie
75% of retirees who retired earlier than expected said they regretted not saving more for retirement
Fragment
“"75% of those retiring earlier than expected reported that they regretted not saving more for retirement."
”
Brongegevens van
2025-11-18
Geraadpleegd
2026-07-04
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
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.
Bronnen: niet handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
[1]Which? — The 4 biggest retirement regrets and how to avoid them
Gerenommeerde referentie
Around 1 in 10 felt they stopped work too early; half as many (~5%) felt they had retired too late
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2025-05-01
Geraadpleegd
2026-07-12
Berekening
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
Vakgenoten-beoordeeld
58.5% of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more
Fragment
“"58.5 percent of the population aged 60 to 79 wished they had saved more."
”
Brongegevens van
2023-02-15
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-25
Berekening
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.
Kanttekeningen
De MedicareFAQ sample is zelf-geselecteerd (online enquête van mensen die een Medicare informatiesite bezoeken) en helt ouder en vrouwelijk. De gemiddelde pensioenleeftijd van 58 is onder de Amerikaanse mediaan, wat betekent dat het sample vroege gepensioneerden oververtegenwoordigt. Het 20% vroeg-pensioen spijt percentage weerspiegelt waarschijnlijk financiële onvoorbereidheid meer dan een echte voorkeur voor voortgezet dienstverband — 86% van respondenten wensten ook dat ze meer hadden gespaard. Onvrijwillige vroege gepensioneerden (gezondheidsproblemen, ontslagen) worden vermengd met vrijwillige. De 6% te-lang-werken spijt kan ook worden onderdrukt door survivorship bias: mensen die werkten tot ze fysiek niet meer kunnen zijn mogelijk niet gezond genoeg om aan enquêtes deel te nemen. Enquêtedata zijn uitsluitend getrokken uit Amerikaanse samples; spijtcijfers in landen met verschillende pensioensystemen — 401(k)-structuren, sociale zekerheidsregels, pensioennormen of zorgrechten — kunnen substantieel verschillen.
