ISSN: 2225-8329
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Retirement is conventionally imagined as the “golden years”, a reward for a lifetime of labour, marked by autonomy, leisure, and dignity. Yet for a growing share of the global ageing population, this ideal has turned grey. This paper examined the retirement crisis faced by the current retirees and why retirement planning is not successful. Retirement inadequacy is not an isolated personal failing but a systemic socio-economic challenge. This paper identified three interrelated causes: financial illiteracy, lifestyle and behavioural patterns such as lifestyle creep and romanticised early retirement, and structural financial constraints including low income, high debt, and multigenerational family obligations. The consequences of failure financial plan retirement are depleted savings, longevity risk, escalating healthcare costs, inflation erosion, reduced quality of life, and forced re-entry into the workforce. To counter these failures, the paper proposes a resilience framework built on realistic “live” retirement budgeting, dynamic inflation modelling, health-span and longevity defence, regular financial communication between partners, clear boundaries with adult children, and appropriate prenuptial or postnuptial agreements. In conclusion, successful retirement planning is not a static mathematical exercise but a dynamic, holistic process of risk management, behavioural governance, and relational alignment. The paper contributes to personal finance and public policy discourse by reframing the retirement crisis as both an individual and a systemic challenge requiring proactive, multidimensional solutions.
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