The Best Country to Take Early Retirement

Have you wondered which country is the best one for taking early retirement? The most generous country has to be Brazil, where the average resident retires at 49, and many people retire with benefits of 100 percent or more of their salary.

What makes Brazil's government pension plan so generous is that it is based on the notion of "time served" with no minimum age for retirement. (Brazil along with Iran and Iraq are the only three countries in the world that don't have a minimum retirement age for collecting a government pension.) Thus, two-thirds of Brazilian civil servants retire younger than 55 and 14 percent retire before they turn 45.

If you satisfy certain conditions, however, you can retire much earlier than 49 with a generous life-time government pension. Take, for example, a farmhand who recently hung up his work clothes at the age of 33. Having satisfied government auditors that he had started working at 3 years old, he will receive a nice pension until he dies, even if he gets another job and retires again.

All told, the great benefit for work-detesting Brazilians who take early retirement is that their retirements can last much longer than their careers. Moreover, they collect a nice pension to help them live in style.

Don't wait for retirement to be happy and really start living. Invariably, people who try this find out that they have waited much too long.
— from the best-selling book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free by Ernie Zelinski

Note: Adapted from the Free E-Book The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie Zelinski available on the Creative Free E-Books Webpage at the Real Success Resource Center.