Retirement countdown clock

Retirement ages in the US, UK and Australia

The US: 62 to 70

Social Security pays from 62, but early costs you. A $1,000 benefit at full retirement age becomes $700 a month if you start at 62 and your full age is 67. That’s 30% off for going five years early, the one excuse to leave work early that comes with a price list. Waiting past your full age raises it, up to 70, and you have to be 62 for the whole month to be paid for it.

If you were born on the 1st of a month, Social Security counts you as born in the month before, and a January 1 birthday counts in the year before. The clock does the same, so a birthday on the 1st gets a countdown a month shorter.

39% of workers expect to work to 70 or later, or never to stop. The clock can’t count to never.

The UK: 66, then 67, then 68

State Pension age is 66 and rising. People born from April 6, 1960 to March 5, 1961 reach it at 66 and 1 to 11 months, a month more for each month they were born later. Anyone born from March 6, 1961 to April 5, 1977 gets it at 67.

Under current law it reaches 68 between 2044 and 2046, depending on your birth date. A third review of the pension age started in July 2025, so the finish line for those later birthdays can still move.

Australia: 67

The Age Pension starts at 67. Men aged 45 and over who retired in 2024-25 stopped at 64.9 on average, and women at 62.7. People 45 and over plan to stop at 65.6, which still leaves 1.4 years to cover before the pension starts.

Working days until retirement

Weekdays left counts every Monday to Friday after today and before your retirement date. It doesn’t know your public holidays, leave or sick days, so you’ll work fewer days than it shows.

Mondays left counts the same way. Ten years out, it’s about 520, and each one opens with a standup.

The clock also can’t tell whether anyone is still checking. Big employers pass round the same two stories. One is the contractor kept on call for years after the calls stopped. The other is the person sent home to wait for a decision that never came, who kept getting a raise every year. Neither of them needed a countdown.

When to hand in your notice

Close to the finish, the way out matters as much as the date. A layoff usually comes with a package. A resignation or a retirement comes with a card. Managers who know a round of cuts is coming sometimes suggest holding the letter a little longer, without saying why.

The unlucky version is the letter handed in the week before the cuts, which trades the package for a card and a cake. Voluntary redundancy offered a few months before a pension starts can pay for that last stretch instead.

A retirement countdown clock for your desktop

Bookmark this page, or keep it in a pinned tab beside the countdown to 5pm, one tab for today and one for the whole job. It reads the time again whenever you come back to it, so the count is right the moment the tab is in front of you. It’s the longest of the work day countdown clocks by some way.