Retirement Years Quotes & Sayings

Many people focus on the 4 percent rule, which essentially says that as long as you withdraw no more than 4 percent from your retirement accounts each year, the money should last you 30 years. — Jean Chatzky

It is estimated that raising the retirement age to 70 would cut the shortfall by about 36%. But this proposal has some drawbacks. Women and men who have worked jobs that require manual labor all of their lives may not physically be able to do work until they are 70 years old. — Steve Israel

I had come out of retirement into a very difficult situation with the PeopleSoft takeover, got through it, and was having a good time, frankly. We just ran out of runway at PeopleSoft. Had we had another year, maybe two years, I think we would have made it. — David Duffield

Sad to hear of Paul Scholes retirement! One of the best midfielders to grace the Premiership! Idolised him for years! Legend. — Jordan Henderson

The long bitter years of the Cold War are over. America and her allies have won; totally, decisively, and overwhelmingly ... So thank you SAC. Job well done. Enjoy your retirement. — Colin Powell

Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. — George Washington

is time that we started reclaiming the idea of retirement. Retirement is not the finish line; it is the new beginning. Retirement is not your last paragraph; it is the long, rich, rewarding final chapters of your own book - as many pages as you can dream up. Retirement is not the end of your life; it is the beginning of the best years of your life! But — Chris Hogan

Money you won't need to use for at least seven years is money for investing. The goal here is to have your account grow over time to help you finance a distant goal, such as building a retirement fund. Since your goal is in the future, money for investing belongs in stocks. — Suze Orman

We have a rare and perhaps small window of opportunity to set partisan differences aside, and attempt to achieve what many in recent years have felt was unreachable - greater retirement security for ourselves and our children. — Gordon Smith

A few generations ago, men went to work or war and rarely got to see life beyond their careers. A generation ago, our parents had to answer the question of what they would do with the last third of their lives. How would they spend their retirement? Would it be squandered on silly things or invested in significance? But now, the question of legacy isn't a matter of if you live long enough or when you retire; it's a matter of what you will do with what you have right now. You don't have to earn a living for thirty years to turn around and spend the next thirty giving it away. If significance is what matters to you, you can structure your life and work in a way that allows you to live your legacy now. In fact, your giving doesn't have to be a by-product of your success; it can be the very thing that drives it in the first place. — Jeff Goins

The more I hung out with detective squads, the more there was always one guy or two guys or a woman who had a case that they were the primary on years ago, it was never solved, and they take that case into their retirements. — Richard Price

There's no retirement, there's just a few years of non-work by the fire with someone bringing you some tea and relative peace and playing with the grandchildren. — Henry Rollins

Congratulations on your well deserved retirement,
Wishing you every happiness in the years ahead.
No lying about your age, more lying around the house
After lying much longer in bed — John Walter Bratton

I want everyone to know I'm coming out of retirement because it's time to free the MMA world of the virus that's known as Tito Ortiz. We've been suffering through his boring fights for too many years, and it's about time that someone beats it out of him once and for all. — Stephan Bonnar

Your manner of life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement. — Paul Tournier

This is my 51st year, but I'm not ready to quit. I definitely didn't think when I first started back in 1963 that I'd be doing this for 50 years, but how many guys can say they do it? When retirement comes, I'm not sure when it is, but I'll be ready for it. — Verne Lundquist

The easy way out is to approve an early retirement plan one year but not pay out sick and vacation time to deserving employees until three years later. Unfortunately, later is now. — Jodi Rell

It's amazing, it doesn't feel like it has been 10 years since retirement. — Gabriela Sabatini

As a chapter closes in your life,
And a new one starts for you,
May your years be filled with all the things
You've been looking forward to! — John Walter Bratton

The full retirement age is 67 and the lifespan is 80, so when they first conceived Social Security, they didn't think they were going to be paying benefits for 13-15 years. That's one of the reasons why this pyramid scheme isn't working. — Joe Heck

Light-years away, another starship was also experiencing problems, though perhaps not as severe. The I.S.S. Antares was not a new ship either. Many older ships in the imperial space fleet reaching retirement age were being refitted with more modern equipment to extend their useful lives. Thus, technologically at least, Antares was currently one of the most advanced ships of the Imperial Space Fleet. Unfortunately, she was now also one of the most troubled. This is what the Phoenix refitting program had done to the Antares. — Christina Engela

[T]he entire conversation was about how much money we needed to put away in order to have a certain income when we retired. The conversation boiled down to this (from my point of view): "Right now, restrict every pleasurable aspect of your life that costs money. Scrimp and save. For the next 30 years. Then--and only then--will you be able to live well once you retire." What I heard was this: Put your life on hold now. Live later. — Kate Northrup

He's retired, he's just turned sixty, you know. And on the actual day of his retirement it turned out he wasn't a radiologist at heart at all, he didn't want to spend another day of his life on medicine. He'd always wanted to be a beekeeper, and now bees are the only thing he'll take an interest in. How do these things happen, do you think? If you're really a beekeeper, how is it that you waste the best years of your life doing something else? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only be deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. — Douglas MacArthur

Just because society has done things the same way for many years, that's no reason to continue doing them. Women will be the harbingers of retirement transformations going forward and will be more creative and humanistic in the process. — Lee Johnson

His colleagues at the Bar called him Filth, but not out of irony. It was because he was considered to be the source of the old joke, Failed In London Try Hong Kong. It was said that he had fled the London Bar, very young, very poor, on a sudden whim just after the War, and had done magnificently well in Hong Kong from the start. Being a modest man, they said, he had called himself a parvenu, a fraud, a carefree spirit.
Filth in fact was no great maker of jokes, was not at all modest about his work and seldom, except in great extremity, went in for whims. He was loved, however, admired, laughed at kindly and still much discussed many years after retirement. — Jane Gardam

40 years old is about the time a principal dancer would start to think about retirement, but some go on to dance a little bit longer than that. — Misty Copeland

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed
guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible. — Richard Russo

Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don't believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To "retire" means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again.
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. — Pablo Casals

My 12 years in New York were very, very special, the fans were very special, and it's something I will take with me wherever I go and into retirement. — Joe Torre

If you start working in your twenties and retire at age sixty you may spend as many years in retirement as you did working. — Michael Bivona

I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert. — Graham Greene

We'd never miss Alex's retirement. No matter how you feel about us being here."

Pompous prick. That was the exact reason Reese bounced his fist off Hayes's face all those years ago. He flexed his hand with the temptation to do it now too. Smarmy dickweed.

"Alex is a good man." Merina stroked Reese's arm, bringing his temper down a notch. "I'm sure he can see exactly what you are trying to accomplish by being here. If you'll excuse us." In a stage whisper, she added, "I'm going to sneak out of here for a moment with Reese. You remember how hard it was to keep your hands off him, I'm sure. — Jessica Lemmon

Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known. — Lord Chesterfield

The information glut has become a ruling cliche. As all resources - from energy to information - become more abundant, the presure of economic scarcity falls ever more heavily on one key residual, and that single shortage looms ever more stringent and controlling. The governing scarcity of the information economy is time: the shards of a second, the hours in a day, the years in a life, the latency of memory, the delay in aluminum wires, the time to market, the time to metastasis, the time to retirement. — George Gilder

We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value. That fight took me ten years. It took me all the way to the Supreme Court. And, in a 5-4 decision, they stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime, and my retirement just because I am a woman. — Lilly Ledbetter

In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm! — Woody Allen

Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan! — Mary Balogh

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years. — Neal Boortz

What if you save for 40 years, putting off all kinds of opportunities, then get hit by a bus the day before retirement? Better to plan for the future while also living in the present. — Chris Guillebeau

Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away! — Stephen Hawking

If I see my films described as 'quirky' or, even worse, 'snarky' one more time, I'm going to probably seriously consider an early retirement. All these years, I've labored under the conceit that they were darkly humorous.' — Terry Zwigoff

We have very strong succession plans across all group companies. But we do not comment on it. The retirement age is 60 years, but it does not apply to family professionals who work in the business. — Adi Godrej

The idea that retirement is the reward for our many years of dedicated service is a very contemporary perspective. — Pamela J. Thomas

If a woman did not work and have the opportunity to save and invest on her own throughout her lifetime, she is often totally reliant on her family and Social Security for her retirement years. — Ginny Brown-Waite

Never mind that the new Visitors Center in Washington DC cost the taxpayers $621 million. Oh and that was ONLY $550 million more than the project was originally supposed to cost. Not to mention the fact that it was supposed to open three years ago .. but it was a government operation. What do you expect? I definitely want to put these people in charge of my healthcare and my retirement plan. — Neal Boortz

As the baby boomers like me are retiring and getting ready to retire, they will spend whatever it takes - and they're the wealthiest generation in our country - to make themselves live an enjoyable life in their retirement years. — David Rubenstein

There are people who look forward to spending their sunset years in the sunshine; it is my own retirement dream to await my death indoors, dragging strangers up dusty staircases while coughing up one of the most thrilling phrases in the English language: "It was on this spot ... " My fantasy is to one day become a docent. — Sarah Vowell

At Cornell University, it was well known that after five years on Wall Street, you could expect to be making half a million a year in salary and bonus; after 10 years, you could expect a million or more. I had 60 grand of university debt, and my parents had no retirement. I needed that money. — Philipp Meyer

What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to p*ss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane? — Steve Buscemi

Considering retirement? When that happens, I don't want that to be the story of whatever the season it is. I don't want to have to be talking about it all the time. My plan is when the time is up, it'll be time to hang it up. When that comes, it'll come. But right now, I don't have any clue as to when that'll be. It's been that way the last couple of years ... I've often felt if I ever get to a point where I don't want to go recruiting and can't get excited about it, then maybe it's time. That's a pretty good indication that's probably it. And I haven't reached that point at all yet. — LaVell Edwards

I'm 68 years old, and somebody asked if I'm retired. I told him, No, I'll still be writing long after I'm dead. — Ron Brackin

Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers' taxable earning years, fueling economic growth and putting a dent in our unfunded-liabilities crisis by delaying payouts. — Michelle Malkin

Yes, we've still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years. — Barack Obama

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For — Arthur Schopenhauer

The idea of the book [Japanes Lover] came in a conversation that I had with a friend walking in the streets of New York. We were talking about our mothers, and I was telling her how old my mother was, and she was telling me about her mother. Her mother was Jewish, and she said that she was in a retirement home and that she had had a friend for 40 years that was a Japanese gardener. This person had been very important in my friend's upbringing. — Isabel Allende

I don't want to quit. I've always said that Clint Eastwood is one of my best friends. I've known Clint for many years and we have almost a jokey relationship about retirement. I always say: "OK Clint, are you ready to retire this year?" And he always says: "No, are you?" So, I'm waiting for the phone call where Clint says he's hanging up his spurs. That's never going to happen. If it doesn't happen for Clint, it won't happen for me. — Steven Spielberg

This book is for you. Getting the "most possible lifetime" dollars from Social Security is likely a significant objective of yours. Saving taxes in retirement is likely a worthy ambition. Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to. Perhaps leaving a legacy might be another goal. Certainly coordinating your Social Security benefits with your investment and other income to combat 20-25 years of inflation is of prime importance. — Mark J. Orr

My financial adviser Ric Edelman ... thinks the time to start educating people about money is when they are children. He's set up a retirement plan called the RIC-E-Trust that can provide retirement security. A $5,000 one-time tax-deferred investment at birth, with an average interest rate of ten percent compounded, means that a child would have $2.4 million when he or she is 65 years old. Who needs Social Security with that kind of nest egg? — Cal Thomas

I only work every couple of years. I go into retirement between films. — Paul Hogan

According to Sports Illustrated, an amazing 78 percent of NFL players find themselves bankrupt or financially stressed within two years of retirement. And 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of walking off the court. — Andy Stanley

I think retirement's for old people. I'm still in the business, thank you. I have a young child of nine years old, and I want to live as long as I can to see him grow up. I'm enjoying my life and I want to stick around for as long as I can. — Harrison Ford

For all your long-term investments, such as retirement accounts that you won't touch for at least ten years, you need a mix of stocks and bonds. Stocks offer the best shot at inflation-beating gains. But stocks don't always go up. That's where bonds come into play: They have less upside potential, but they also do not pack the same risk. — Suze Orman

Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future
you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college. — John Green

First, women are more likely to live in poverty during their retirement years than are men. — Ginny Brown-Waite

One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits - a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. — Chris Christie

I was born and raised in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I was 15 when I got my first job serving food to the residents in a retirement home - 22 years later I would shoot my first film in one. — Joey Lauren Adams

She was forty-one years old, and she was tired. But the fatigue would pass. The old dreams of full-time motherhood and a cushy retirement were forever forgotten. — John Grisham

The median savings of households 10 years from retirement is a paltry $12,000; nearly one-third of those 55-64 have no savings. — Anonymous

Worrying about money is one of the worst worries. It's like having locked-in syndrome, except you're still moving around and doing things. Your head burns. If other people are not having money problems, it pisses you off because it reminds you that you're limited in the ways you can express your agency in the world, and they aren't. Worrying about money is anger-inducing because it makes you think about time: how many dollars per hour, how much salary per year, how many years until retirement. Worrying about money forces you to do endless math in your head, and most people didn't like math in high school and they don't like it now. — Douglas Coupland

Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Our government makes the simple promise of a secure retirement to every American who works for many years and contributes to our retirement benefit system. — Sue Kelly

Including my nine years as a student, the majority of my life has been at Hokkaido University. After my retirement from the university in 1994, I served at two private universities in Okayama Prefecture - Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts - before retiring from university work in 2002. — Akira Suzuki

Too often what are called "educated" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years. — Thomas Sowell

The happiest people I know are the ones that are still working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working. — George Burns

Few societies have come to grips with the new demography. We cling to the notion of retirement at sixty-five - a reasonable notion when those over sixty-five were a tiny percentage of the population but increasingly untenable as they approach 20 percent. People are putting aside less in savings for old age now than they have at any time since the Great Depression. More than half of the very old now live without a spouse and we have fewer children than ever before, yet we give virtually no thought to how we will live out our later years alone. — Atul Gawande

Why shouldn't two new Justices be appointed each administration? A re-elected President would then have four opportunities to appoint. At the beginning of each administration, the two oldest Justices would automatically hand in their resignations, to take effect at the President's convenience. Thus new blood would be infused into the Court at regular intervals without rancour, and the Court would normally be renewed every 16 years ... Whenever death or retirement occurred, the President would have an extra appointment. — Harriet Boyd Hawes

A good marriage is like an incredible retirement fund. You put everything you have into it during your productive life, and over the years it turns from silver to gold to platinum. — Willard Scott

Let me tell you exactly what we would do on Social Security. Yes, we'd raise the retirement age two years and phase it in over 25 years; that means we'd raise it one month a year for 25 years when we're all living longer, and living better lives. — Chris Christie

Peter Forsberg's skills and determination made him one of the most powerful forwards in the NHL during the best years of his career. Hearing of his retirement is sad news but one day every athlete has to come to this decision. He should be very proud of all he accomplished throughout his career. — Patrick Roy

For pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. — John Green

Boys who cry can work for Google. Boys who trash computers cannot. I once was at a science conference, and I saw a NASA scientist who had just found out that his project was canceled - a project he'd worked on for years. He was maybe sixty-five years old, and you know what? He was crying. And I thought, Good for him. That's why he was able to reach retirement age working in a job he loved. — Temple Grandin

Refire - an attitude of embracing the years ahead with enthusiasm rather than apathy. — Morton Shaevitz

In the next 25 years, we will see a 100 percent increase in the number of American retirees. The number of workers, however, will increase by only 15 percent. Given those numbers, how can these programs survive? Under our current tax code, these programs can be maintained only by increasing the tax on those who work, reducing benefits for those who have retired or by increasing the age of retirement. — John Linder

Why do people put off travel until retirement? What are they saving it for? I understand that people want to be financially secure first, and pay off pension plans, but why consign the most active years of your life to drudgery? Why would you sacrifice today's freedom for a future that will always remain uncertain, no matter how carefully you plan for it? I'm not saying that everyone sitting in an office right this minute should drop everything and take off for Central Europe. I'm saying that if you want to see the world, plan for it and do it as soon as possible. The experience will give you the inspiration and fortitude you need to survive being a grown up. — Jessica Zafra

We're looking at a huge gap between what an entire generation thinks is going to happen during its retirement years and the funds that are there - or, more accurately, are not there - to make good on all those promises. — John C. Goodman

First the strangers came with argument and authority and gunpowder to back up both. And in the four hundred years Kino's people had learned only one defense - a slight slitting of the eyes and a slight tightening of the lips and a retirement. Nothing could break down this wall, and they could remain whole within the wall. — John Steinbeck

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating ... and you finish off as an orgasm. — George Carlin