I Followed Traditional Retirement Advice: My 6 Biggest Regrets at 70

Everyone who has ever approached retirement has been handed the same well-worn playbook. Save inside your 401(k). Claim Social Security at the right age. Keep expenses low. Trust the system. It sounds sensible, even reassuring. The problem is that the gap between what the advice promises and what retirement actually delivers can be enormous, and at 70, that gap stings in ways you simply cannot anticipate in your 40s.

I did what I was supposed to do. I followed the advice. I checked the boxes. Yet here I am, looking back at decisions that seemed smart at the time and realizing just how much the traditional playbook left out. These are my six biggest regrets, and the data suggests I am far from alone.

Regret #1: I Started Saving Seriously Way Too Late

Let’s be real, the advice to “save for retirement” is given to everyone, but almost nobody actually acts on it in their 20s. I certainly didn’t. I told myself there would be time, that my income would grow, that I’d catch up eventually. That thinking cost me years of compounding growth that I simply cannot get back.

Baby boomers were a median age of 35 before they began saving for retirement outside of their workplace account, according to the 24th Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers, published in June 2024. That means these workers missed years of compounding gains on their retirement savings. I was right in that group, and I felt the consequences later.

If you save $1,000 a month starting at age 40, with a 7% return, you could potentially build a nest egg worth around $758,000 by 65. But if you wait until 50, you’d need to save approximately $2,520 a month to reach a similar goal. That math is brutal. And honestly, nobody laid it out that clearly for me when I was younger.

Nearly half of retirees feel they waited too long to concern themselves with saving and investing for retirement. Knowing I’m in such large company doesn’t make it sting any less. The time I lost is irreplaceable, and that’s a hard truth to sit with at 70.

Regret #2: I Treated Social Security Like a Simple Formula

For years, the standard advice was clear: delay Social Security as long as possible, ideally until 70, to maximize your monthly benefit. I followed it without really stress-testing whether it applied to my specific situation. It turns out that rule of thumb is far more complicated than anyone lets on.

Nearly one in five respondents (19%) regretted claiming Social Security retirement benefits too early. The older the respondents were, the more likely they were to express this regret. Interestingly though, the flip side also has a painful human cost. Some people who waited until 70, banking on that larger check, found they had sacrificed years of experiences in their healthiest window of retirement to do it.

Retirees currently receiving Social Security started at age 63 (median), which translates to a lower monthly benefit than if they had waited until their full retirement age. Only 4% of retirees waited until age 70 or later, which would have maximized their monthly benefit. The right answer depends on health, life expectancy, and whether you have other income, but nobody gave me a decision framework. They just said “wait.”

A 2024 Senior Citizens League report shows that benefits have lost nearly 20% of their buying power since 2010, an erosion that amounts to roughly $4,440 a year. Even with delayed claiming, the purchasing power of those checks has been quietly eroding for years. That part of the traditional advice was conspicuously absent.

Regret #3: I Completely Underestimated Healthcare Costs

Here’s the thing nobody told me clearly enough: Medicare is not free, and it does not cover everything. I entered retirement with a vague, reassuring idea that healthcare would somehow be “handled.” I was wrong in a way that has been financially and emotionally draining.

Health care costs catch many retirees by surprise. About half of retirees told Schroders they thought Medicare would cover more of their health care expenses than it does. I was one of those people. The out-of-pocket costs that sneak up on you, prescriptions, copays, specialist visits, supplemental premiums, were genuinely shocking.

Healthcare expenses are unavoidable and increasingly unaffordable for retirees. Fidelity Research says a 65-year-old retiring in 2024 can expect to spend an average of $165,000 on healthcare and medical expenses throughout retirement, a 5% jump over the previous year and more than double 2002’s estimate. That number has been climbing for years and shows no signs of plateauing.

Healthcare spending grew 6.9% from January to November 2025, and that is the category that hits retirees hardest. A 2.5% benefit increase does not keep pace with medical costs if healthcare takes a meaningful share of your budget. I had built a retirement budget. I had not built a healthcare inflation budget. Those are two very different things, and confusing them is a costly mistake.

Regret #4: I Had No Real Withdrawal Strategy

I saved diligently inside tax-advantaged accounts for decades. I did what the traditional advice said: max out contributions, let it grow, don’t touch it. What the advice never really addressed was how to actually draw the money down without running out of it or creating a surprise tax bill in the process.

A survey conducted in October 2024 by IRALOGIX found that 49% had no formal withdrawal strategy in retirement, choosing to just withdraw what they wanted or needed as they went along. Honestly, that described me for the first few years. I was spending without a clear sequence, which is a little like driving a car while only checking the fuel gauge occasionally.

44% said inflation had no impact on what they withdrew, and 29% had no strategy for adjusting spending based on market performance. Only 20% said they had a plan for healthcare or other unexpected costs, and only 17% said they managed taxes on their withdrawals. These are staggering numbers when you think about it. The accumulation phase gets all the attention. The decumulation phase, actually spending the money wisely, is left largely to chance.

About 54% of retirees say they were surprised by how much it costs to retire. The average retired household spends $54,975 each year. That spending figure catches many people off guard, especially those who assumed their costs would shrink once they stopped commuting and buying work clothes. Life, it turns out, keeps being expensive.

Regret #5: I Ignored Debt Going Into Retirement

Traditional retirement advice focused almost entirely on savings. Grow the nest egg. Maximize contributions. Very little of that advice seriously confronted the other side of the ledger: the debt I was carrying into my 60s. I was not unusual. Debt in retirement has quietly become one of the most underreported crises of our time.

Almost two-thirds of American retirees (64%) are still carrying some debt beyond a mortgage, including 1 in 3 (31%) with more than $10,000 in debt. That’s a breathtaking statistic. Carrying significant debt into a fixed-income situation compresses your options in ways that build real stress over time.

Heading into 2024, about two in three retirees (63%) say they are in some form of non-mortgage debt. The average retiree owes $15,393 in non-mortgage debt, with credit card debt playing a significant role. Credit card interest at retirement-age income levels is particularly punishing. It can quietly consume a meaningful portion of monthly income that should be going toward living well.

49% of retirees indicate that debt interfered with their ability to save for retirement. Think about how circular that trap becomes: debt prevents saving, which limits retirement security, which forces retirees to use what little savings they have to manage debt. Nobody in the traditional advice camp ever told me to treat debt elimination as a retirement priority equal to savings. I wish they had.

Regret #6: I Never Planned for the Emotional Reality of Retirement

This one surprises people the most. We spend so much time planning the finances of retirement that we almost completely neglect to plan for who we will be once the work is gone. I retired and discovered a quiet identity crisis that nobody had prepared me for. The structure, the purpose, the social contact, all of it vanished at once.

In 2024, retirees rated two out of three well-being measures lower than they did in 2020 and 2022. On a scale of 1 to 10, retirees rated lifestyle alignment with pre-retirement expectations an average of 5.7, down from 6.4 in 2022 and 6.8 in 2020. That declining score tells a story. Retirement is looking less and less like the idealized version people had pictured for themselves.

Some of those in their 70s and 80s regretted not spending more money during their early retirement years, especially on experiences like travel, hobbies and family activities. I was so worried about running out of money that I held back on the very experiences that would have made those early retirement years genuinely fulfilling. That’s a particularly painful kind of regret.

76% of retirees wish they would have saved more and on a consistent basis. 68% wish they had been more knowledgeable about retirement saving and investing. Financial regret and emotional regret are deeply intertwined. The more financially anxious you are, the less freely you live. Getting both sides right, the money and the meaning, is the real retirement challenge that traditional advice almost entirely ignores.