Finance
Planning to delay retirement may not rescue you from poor savings
Alistair Berg | Digitalvision | Getty Images
Planning to work longer is a popular escape hatch for Americans who feel they’ve saved too little to support themselves in old age.
About 27% of workers intend to work in retirement because they need to supplement their income, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey survey. They polled 6,657 U.S. adults in early August, including 2,603 who are retired and 4,054 who are working full time or part time, are self-employed or who own a business.
While working longer is among the best ways to shore up one’s nest egg, the plan may backfire, according to retirement experts.
Workers may not be able to work into their late 60s, early 70s or later due to an unexpected health complication or a layoff, for example.
“It sounds great on paper,” said Philip Chao, a certified financial planner and founder of Experiential Wealth, based in Cabin John, Maryland. “But reality could be very different.”
If workers lose those wages, they’d have to figure out another way to make their retirement savings last.
Workers often retire earlier than planned
A nonexistent ‘escape valve’
Americans generally use a later retirement age “as an escape valve which doesn’t necessarily exist,” Chao said. “But saying it and doing it are two totally different things.”
It could ultimately be a “very dangerous” assumption, Chao said.
Many people who retired earlier than planned, 35%, did so because of a hardship, such as a health problem or disability, according to the EBRI survey. Another 31% of them retired due to “changes at their company,” such as a layoff.
It sounds great on paper. But reality could be very different.
Philip Chao
founder of Experiential Wealth
More than half, 56%, of full-time workers in their early 50s get pushed out of their jobs due to layoffs and other circumstances before they’re ready to retire, according to a 2018 Urban Institute paper. Often, such workers earn substantially less money if they ultimately find another job, the paper found.
Of course, some people exit the workforce early for positive reasons: More than a third, 35%, of people who retired earlier than anticipated did so because they could afford to, EBRI found.
There are benefits to working longer
Working longer — for those who can do it — is a financial boon, according to retirement experts.
For one, workers can delay drawing down their savings; that keeps their nest egg intact longer and may allow it to continue growing via investment profit and additional contributions. Workers can also delay claiming Social Security benefits, which can boost how much they receive.
Some people continue to work longer because they like it: About a quarter, 26%, of workers said they want to work in retirement, and 17% of retirees continue to work in some capacity because they enjoy it, according to the CNBC retirement survey.
Americans may also get non-financial benefits from working longer, such as improved health and longevity. However, research suggests such benefits depend on how much stress workers experience on the job, and the physical demands of their labor.
Working longer also appears to be more of a possibility for a growing share of older workers.
“A shift away from a manufacturing economy to one primarily focused on delivering services and information facilitates working to an older age,” Jeffrey Jones, a Gallup analyst, wrote.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic is in talks to raise a $3.5 billion funding round, significantly more than the amount previously expected, CNBC has confirmed.
The round would roughly triple the artificial intelligence startup’s valuation to $61.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. Lightspeed Ventures is leading the funding, with participation from General Catalyst and others, the sources said.
The financing, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, signals continued investor demand for top-tier AI companies, even in the face of potential disruption from China’s DeepSeek. Anthropic is backed by Amazon and Google, and had initially set out to raise $2 billion, according to a source.
Anthropic declined to comment.
The company’s last private market valuation was $18 billion. Amazon has poured $8 billion into the startup.
Anthropic was founded by early OpenAI employees and is the creator of the popular chatbot Claude. Earlier Monday, Anthropic released what it says is it’s “most intelligent AI model yet. Its so-called hybrid model combines an ability to reason — or stopping to think about complex answers — with a traditional model that spits out answers in real time.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday said the U.S. government is inefficient and in need of work as the Trump administration terminates thousands of federal employees and works to dismantle agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dimon was asked by CNBC’s Leslie Picker whether he supported efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. He declined to give what he called a “binary” response, but made comments that supported the overall effort.
“The government is inefficient, not very competent, and needs a lot of work,” Dimon told Picker. “It’s not just waste and fraud, its outcomes.”
The Trump administration’s effort to rein in spending and scrutinize federal agencies “needs to be done,” Dimon added.
“Why are we spending the money on these things? Are we getting what we deserve? What should we change?” Dimon said. “It’s not just about the deficit, its about building the right policies and procedures and the government we deserve.”
Dimon said if DOGE overreaches with its cost-cutting efforts or engages in activity that’s not legal, “the courts will stop it.”
“I’m hoping it’s quite successful,” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon also addressed his company’s push to have most workers in office five days a week, as well as his views on the Ukraine conflict, tariffs and the U.S. consumer.
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