This story came up today via ARD (German public TV, Channel One).
The BILD newspaper folks have a Sunday edition....called 'Welt am Sonntag'. They did research project and came to the University of Wuppertal. The university has been doing a lot of polling and chats with the public in Germany.
It's an interesting thing. The majority of Germans want to retire before the official retirement age (currently set at 65 years and 8 months). The German government has a program in place where the retirement age will increase slightly (year by year) and in the next decade....will reach 67 years.
So here's the thing....at least thirty-percent of Germans want full retirement by age 60. Another 26-percent want retirement done by age 63. At present....roughly only one out of every eight Germans are agreeable to the current government set retirement age.
Germans will argue about the government age thing....with most pointing out that physically....a fair sum of folks are just not capable of making it into their mid-to-late 60s (brick-layers, roofers, etc). In fact, some roofers will say that they ought to be fully retired by age 50. Those who had the better professions and higher pay scale....have the chance in their 30s and 40s....to lay out sums of money, and invest well enough to retire early by age 60. The real middle-class? It would be tough to aim at age 60 for retirement. Part of this issue is the home situation, and if you've got your mortgage finished off by your early 50s, and devote a vast sum of funding toward retirement investments.
This whole debate going on by the SPD Party over resolving the pension shortfalls? It's simply dragging out a whole bunch of side-topics related to pensions and retirement, and getting the public frustrated over the path they are stuck with.
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