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For Brian Burdick, working at 82 has been one of life’s most surprising joys.

The Wichita, Kansas, resident spent his early career making airline parts and selling insurance. A series of personal upheavals — an injury in his 50s, a costly divorce, his sister’s death, and a house fire — left him with little savings and a mound of financial stress. He became a school bus driver and worked evenings at a department store to “just survive,” he says.

Years of chugging along the route have finally paid off: His $28-an-hour pay, coupled with his monthly Social Security check, means work is less about the money and more about the role he can play in thousands of young lives, even if finances are still tighter.

“I’ve taught autistic kids to talk. I’ve dealt with the very worst kids in the whole system, and I’ve changed a lot of them,” Burdick says. “I saw a piece on how to have a happy life. It was someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. I have an excuse to get out of bed.”

Burdick is part of a growing cohort of Americans who, whether by choice or necessity, are deviating from the retire-at-65 standard. Fewer people are simply working 40 years, stepping away as Social Security kicks in, and then riding out their golden years. Over the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 people who are still working past 80, and dozens more who retired in their 30s and 40s. Collectively, their stories lay bare how the traditional retirement path has withered away for millions of Americans.

As I reported in my “80 Over 80” series, 4.2% of the 80+ population still works, up from 3% in 2010, based on an analysis of Census data. The 75+ workforce is the fastest-growing of all demographics, while roughly one in five Americans 65+ works, double the rate in the 1980s. On the younger end, the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement has gained momentum as financial education moves into the mainstream. A 2023 survey of over 2,000 respondents conducted by The Harris Poll found that a quarter wanted to retire before turning 50, though the number who actually pull it off is much lower.

The people trying to retire by 35 and those still working at 85 had different reasons for their shared disillusionment with the old standards — general economic woes, fear of the job market, longer life spans, the rising costs of owning a home, childcare, and groceries, and the pushing back of life events like marriage or having kids. But both generations shared a feeling that work isn’t simply a means to an end, but rather part of the means itself. Instead of marking time, people are trying to live or be happy enough in their work that it doesn’t feel like a slog. What’s the point of life if you don’t enjoy most of it? There isn’t much of a point in just expecting life to get better at 65 when nothing fundamentally changes about who you are once you hit that milestone.

While some people are happy to follow the old ways — the average age of retirement in America is 62 — the growing extremes could offer a glimpse into what some retirement experts told me is the slow demise of the current retirement model and the redefining of what work means in our lives.

The (un)lucky few who work into their 80s

Vicki Vosper-Fenton considers herself a late bloomer. After raising her children, navigating a divorce, and jumping between jobs, she went to college at 40 to become a counselor. She worked at a domestic violence shelter and a women’s prison, then pivoted to an alternative school and a mental health nonprofit. It was a fulfilling career that left her with a comfortable pile of savings by 63. A traditional retirement full of bridge or cribbage wasn’t in the cards, though. At 81, a few years after decamping to Idaho, she still juggles two jobs as an online teacher and genealogist for her church, social engagements, and family time, having “the time of my life.”

“Serving others in whatever capacity just simply brings joy to my life and keeps me young,” Vosper-Fenton says. She added, “I’ve decided to mentally be 55. I don’t go to the senior citizen centers because I’m too young.”

America’s oldest workers repeatedly tell me they’re too young, agile, and healthy to simply ride off into the proverbial sunset. Vosper-Fenton’s financially unshackled non-retirement represents the positive side of moving away from the age-65 expectation, but many older workers face a very different reality. Some I spoke to broke into tears when they talked about the strain of their working conditions, sometimes waking up at 4 a.m. or coming home at 2 a.m. Some explained how they were in agony, having to do physical labor. Many wished life had been fairer.

Still, every worker saw at least some sort of silver lining. Beyond helping their communities, most mentioned working to show their peers and younger generations that they were capable. Many mentioned friends withering away shortly after stepping away from work entirely. They wanted to be role models for their grandchildren, inspirations for their friends, and the faces of their companies, showcasing that age shouldn’t be weighed so heavily.

Serving others in whatever capacity just simply brings joy to my life and keeps me young

As a few put it, these were their golden years of work.

And many have a reason for thinking this. Stronger labor laws, greater educational opportunities, and more advanced technology have made work overall safer and healthier, though people have always sought purpose in their work, said Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Bruno added that while today’s work options are more diverse, there isn’t a meaningful correlation between age and how work is perceived. There still are some differences, though.

Among younger workers, “there was this more conscientious approach to thinking about a balance between their hours on the job and how that fed into the rest of their life, whereas older workers just seem to have accepted what the hours were, and then would go about figuring it out,” Bruno said.

For Jim Billman, 83, working a few hours a week has filled some holes in his life. He worked in construction and teaching for years, and since 2013, he’s worked part-time in construction and hotel maintenance in Michigan. He needed the extra income until recently, but he’s cut back on hours. With the extra time, he’s tried to stay active, see his family, and be present in his community.

“I’ve done some pretty risky stuff in my life — dodging bullets, climbing on and building roofs, sawing, scaffolding, and motorcycles,” Billman said. “I don’t suppose I’ll spend much time on roofs or ladders other than my own. A person tries to be careful and stay within their capabilities. I’ve never been a daredevil.”

The young workers hoping to feel similarly

Many on the other side of the age spectrum had visions of work similar to those of people three times their age. Some in the FIRE movement have forged a path to not need to work. Many others, though, worked hard or spent years studying financial principles to work a job they want.

The FIRE movement, many said, is much more about staying engaged with careers that matter. Some who reached FIRE have taken on less stressful and more community-oriented jobs. Others have started businesses tied to lifelong passions. Some told me they retired at 30 and are blogging their travels around the world, have opened a consulting company, or have gone into real estate full time. Others are Coast FI, meaning they invested enough early in life that they could live off the growth of their nest egg rather than future contributions. For many, the RE in the FIRE acronym often doesn’t mean a full retirement, but it does mean getting off the hamster wheel before 65.

“Retirement equals a full-funded lifestyle change,” said Amanda Walt, 33, who works in Boston as a tech program manager and, with her husband, has a net worth in the low seven figures. “Shifting away from ‘retirement means never working’ has also enabled me to take intentional career breaks that have accelerated longer-term growth.”

In 2025, Ewa Linn, 37, worked only about a quarter of the year. “Time is the scarcest resource,” says Linn, adding that “memories pay dividends.” She was laid off during the Great Recession from her first job in fashion, and stumbled into freelance work after a series of rejections. After three years, she landed a full-time job, only to be frustrated by bureaucracy and a toxic work environment. After losing her job at the start of the pandemic, back to freelancing she went, producing photo shoots, project managing, and styling.

I’m at a point where I can either seek out jobs that pay less and don’t come with the stress of going after a high-paying job

Around that time, she started getting into the FIRE principles. In Jersey City, she and her husband increased their savings rate to 65%-75%, paid down debt, and house hacked, meaning they bought a property and live in one section while renting the rest. They put their money into index funds, maxed out their 401(k)s and IRAs, and were mindful not to overspend. By 2024, they hit their FIRE goal, meaning they no longer needed to work.

“We used to say yes to everything. We were in the rat race, trying to make this all happen. Now we don’t have to,” Linn says. “We only say yes to clients who are enjoyable and projects that fulfill us.”

Grant Sabatier, the author of the international bestseller “Financial Freedom,” retired at 30 and said the career grind often leaves little room for personal growth and new experiences. He added that achieving financial independence allows for greater balance between work, family, and personal fulfillment. Of course, many Americans are not in a position to achieve financial independence anytime soon, but many basic investing and saving principles could get people on the right track.

“Older people say, ‘I wish I would have spent more time with family, or I wish I would have not worked as hard or traveled more.’ A lot of people in the FIRE movement have internalized those lessons,” Sabatier says.

Meg Nichols, 31, has already taken two mini retirements — not including a gap year after college — and, by her estimates, will retire between 45 and 50. At 16, Nichols’ parents encouraged her to open a Roth IRA. After graduating from college, she became a sales team coordinator, then a senior account specialist, at a food tech startup in the Bay Area. After two years on the job, she gave up her apartment and took a six-month break to travel. Then, when the pandemic hit, she returned to her previous company for three years, leading e-commerce sales. Any extra dollar went toward maxing out her IRAs and 401(k) before filling her brokerage account. She estimated a post-tax savings rate of about 70%.

In 2023, she had enough money to quit her job and go on a nearly-three year, 54-country backpacking trip. Thanks to compounding and keeping spending to about $3,000 a month, less than her monthly outlays in San Francisco, she came back to a net worth that is 20% higher than when she left. She recently started a new job in account management, a role she believes she’ll enjoy without it taking over her life.

“By being Coast FI, I enabled choice in my life and the option to take roles for a variety of reasons,” Nichols says. “It doesn’t have to be compensation-based.”

For many, the age 65 retirement is less of a goal and more of a burden. Some retirees I’ve spoken to over the past year said they felt pressured by society to stop working at that magic number, while others said it was a race against their biological clock.

Will the 65 number go away?

As more Americans adopt these two approaches, the question arises whether the traditional retirement age of mid-60s may be outdated. There are the academic debates: Economists and financial experts argue that maybe raising the standard expectation to 69 or 70, or indexing the retirement age to average life expectancy, could keep pace with the financial toll of living longer. Meanwhile, given that many Americans retire well before this age, often due to health factors, others argue that benefits should start earlier for more vulnerable populations.

For people living on both sides of this shift, though, 65 is increasingly an archaic benchmark. Some told me that assigning an arbitrary number to when is considered “proper” to retire just sets people up to fail. There’s little shame in not being ready to retire when the average person does, even if it’s stressful. Likewise, nobody should be forced out of work upon hitting a certain age. For those who retired early, they emphasized that there’s no reason to put off retirement planning, adding that many people wait until their 30s or 40s to reach a solid savings number by 65.

Life is unpredictable, they said, so planning to retire at 65, only to have dreams crushed by a life emergency or a layoff, can be even more crushing. Finding purpose through work and outside the 9-to-5 grind is perhaps the most important step to a good life, many agreed, even if it means years of sacrifice or a walker.

Noah Sheidlower is a senior economy reporter with Business Insider covering retirement, aging, and employment trends.