As others have said, everyone's situation is different. I have been working full time for 36 years now. If I could afford it today and did not need my employer's health insurance, I would retire from full time employment and get a part-time job (20-25 hours a week) just to stay out of trouble.
I am 2 years and 11 months away from being able to start collecting SS, but I really don't want to start collecting at age 62. I'm hoping to wait until 65 to start collecting SS, even though my full retirement age is 67. I don't know if I have inherited more of my mother's genes (she passed away at 67) or my father's genes (he is 89), but I really don't want to wait until 67 to start collecting SS as tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. In the past few years, two friends of mine died unexpectedly. One at age 56, and the other at age 64.
And then the wild card in all of this is my job...my manager quite often brings up the topic of automation and elimination of jobs in my team sometime in the next few years. And I know whose job will be gone if automation/robotization comes to pass...mine.
