Get rich, retire early!

From the department of the somewhat obvious - a study on financial windfalls and retirement showed that:

"Older workers who get a jolt of cash out of the blue are more likely to cash in on early retirement…

unexpected inheritances hasten retirement, lending new credence to a widely held economic theory that people value leisure time and will parlay newfound wealth into less work…

The study found that nearly a quarter of workers who received a surprise or bigger-than-expected inheritance retired early, compared with 18 percent of total workers surveyed in the ongoing Health and Retirement Survey. The odds increased significantly as windfalls grew.."

I'd say that would apply to any workers, not just older ones!

Also:

"A negative shock to wealth has just the opposite effect of what we have in this study, so I expect that those [recent stock market] losses are going to lead some people to work longer than they expected."

Annoyingly they've not named the study but it was by Jeffrey R. Brown (pictured) and Scott Weisbenner from the University of Illinois.

For more info see the U of Illinois press release 13 August 2009.