Wealthy people are less likely to retire, report says

What do you do after working hard all your life and becoming wealthy? The answer, apparently, is you keep working.

Contradicting the notion that the financially well-off will retire in grand fashion once they’re able to, a new study says wealthy people are more inclined to keep working.

Of five annual income categories ranging from $100,00 to $750,000, the highest earners said they were the most likely to continue working, according to the survey by the Spectrem Group, a consulting and market-research firm. Counterintuitive as it may sound, that backs up previous research showing that many rich people plan to keep working.

That stems partially from the way wealthy people view themselves and their success -- as a result of hard work and risk-taking, which they’re not inclined to give up just because they can financially. And high-net-worth people also are frequently tied to companies they own or have founded, making it harder to detach logistically and emotionally.

And even the well-off are not immune to financial worries, according to a Spectrem report last month.

It found that 52% of investors making more than $750,000 annually worried about being able to maintain their current financial positions.

Maybe the wealthy aren’t so different from the rest of us after all?

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Twitter: @LATwalter