Mar 31, 2026
Counting on bonuses or other windfalls for your retirement can be risky. After all, you’re rarely in full control of the size or timing of these potential additions to your income — or whether they come at all.
Take the hypothetical case of Leticia, a 61-year-old Kansas City woman hoping to retire in six months. She was counting on a $15,000 bonus from her employer, but because of a less-than-stellar performance review, she didn’t receive it this year.
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Leticia has been working in admin at a large manufacturing plant for 30 years. She’s had consistently good performance reviews and has been promoted several times over the years. However, over the past couple of years, the company has been reducing its workforce — and, as a result, her workload has increased dramatically.
She’s become increasingly exhausted and burned out, and her most recent performance review was, for the first time, not so great. But she also feels it wasn’t fair, considering the circumstances.
Leticia is trying to decide whether to stay, fight the review and try to get the bonus — which she feels would cement her financial readiness for retirement — or simply retire on her own terms.
Should you stay or should you go?
One-off payments such as bonuses, commissions or profit-sharing are not guaranteed. If they don’t come through, they can trigger financial uncertainty and emotional frustration, especially if they’re tied to subjective workplace assessments.
If Leticia wants to appeal or dispute the review, she should first check whether her company has a formal procedure for doing so. If not, she should submit a written rebuttal, specifically detailing what she disagrees with and providing evidence to counter the poor appraisal. That Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has a page with steps outlining how to do this (1).
If Leticia had been planning to stay on for a few more years, she could have worked out an action plan so she could perform better on her next review — but this was always planned to be her last, so there’s little need.
Her main goal would be to restore the bonus, but this may not be successful. And, given the size of the bonus, she feels the cost and time required to sue the company would not be worth her while.
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Although she may be tempted to quit immediately, Leticia may want to assess her retirement readiness beyond her deteriorating work situation before she chooses to leave.
Thankfully, the bonus — while nice to have — wasn’t pivotal to her financial readiness for retirement.
She and her husband have been saving diligently for decades, and their financial advisor recently told them they’ve hit their goal of saving enough to cover 80% of their pre-retirement annual income. According to Fidelity, this is a common benchmark used to maintain one’s standard of living in retirement (2).
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Timing your retirement
While windfalls and bonuses can add to retirement savings and help you reach your goals faster — particularly if they’re received early in your career — counting on these to take you over the line into retirement is akin to gambling.
A retirement plan can be revised if you receive a windfall, but it should stand on its own merits. If you’re thinking about retiring, but working longer might result in more bonuses, additional stock options or other benefits, you’ll need to weigh whether this will alter your retirement enough to make staying in your job worth it.
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Leticia and her husband have enough savings that they can wait until full retirement age (FRA) to begin receiving Social Security benefits. For people of their age (born in 1965), the full retirement age is 67 (3).
You can start collecting benefits as early as age 62, but taking them before your FRA will result in a permanent reduction in your monthly benefit. For instance, if you start taking benefits at 62, your monthly check will be reduced by 30% (4).
Health care is another consideration. Leticia is covered by her husband’s health benefits, which will continue throughout their retirement. If you don’t have insurance that will extend into retirement, you may want to wait to retire until you’re eligible for Medicare at 65.
Otherwise, you’ll need to look into Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage, short-term limited duration plans or more comprehensive private health insurance to bridge the gap. This should be factored into your retirement planning, as it could be a significant expense.
If you’re deciding when to pull the trigger on retirement, finances are important — but they’re not the only consideration. You’ll want to reflect on whether you’re emotionally ready to retire and whether you have a plan for what’s next.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
Society for Human Resource Management (1); Fidelity (2); Social Security Administration (3 , 4)
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Vawn Himmelsbach is a veteran journalist who has been covering tech, business, finance and travel for the past three decades. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post, Metro News, Canadian Geographic, Zoomer, CAA Magazine, Travelweek, Explore Magazine, Flare and Consumer Reports, to name a few.
