Been reading about how retirement looks totally different depending on where you live, and honestly the Mexico comparison is pretty eye-opening. So here's what caught my attention.

In the US, most people are calling it quits around 62 on average according to recent data. You can technically start collecting Social Security at that point, but here's the thing - you won't get your full benefits until you hit what they call full retirement age. If you were born in 1960 or later, that's 67. A lot of college-educated folks tend to push it even later though, probably because they've got better health or less physically demanding work.

Now flip over to Mexico and the retirement age in Mexico has actually been shifting pretty dramatically. Used to be men were retiring at 67 and women at 64, but after the government reformed the pension system in 2019, things started changing. They introduced a universal payment system so everyone 65+ gets something, which is pretty different from the US approach. The amounts have been climbing too - started at around 2550 pesos back in 2019, jumped to 4800 pesos by 2023, and now there's new legislation that ties it to your final salary up to about 16,778 pesos.

Here's where it gets interesting though. After those reforms kicked in, both men and women in Mexico started retiring about a year earlier on average. So the retirement age in Mexico actually went down despite the system getting better. That's kind of the opposite of what's happening in the US where people are working longer.

The whole dynamic really shows how pension policy shapes when people actually leave the workforce. Makes you wonder what's coming next for retirement systems globally, especially with aging populations everywhere.