Can my Sims retire in The Sims 4?

As a passionate Sims gamer for over a decade now, I‘m constantly experimenting with new career and retirement strategies. So let‘s dive deep into everything you need to know about retiring your Sims…

Reaching That Retirement Stage

Before retirement is even possible, your Sims first need to reach the esteemed elder life stage, which occurs around day 94 on the default normal lifespan setting.

Once your Sim crosses into elder status, they automatically retire from their current career. But you also have the flexibility to manually retire them earlier than that if desired. I personally think it‘s wise to let them work up until elder, just to maximize those career rewards!

Here‘s a quick table illustrating when standard retirement kicks in based on the lifespan setting:

As you can see, normal lifespan Sims retire roughly 3 months into their elder years. But you can stretch that much longer with the long setting!

Pros and Cons of Retiring Your Sims

Retirement comes with plenty of perks, but there are some definite downsides too. Let‘s analyze some of the key pros and cons here:

Pros

• No more work commute or duties
• Pension provides steady income flow
• Finally enjoy hard-earned leisure time
• Get to focus on personal relationships
• More time for passions like fishing, gardening, etc.

Cons

• Lose out on potential career earnings
• Pension is less than peak salary
• Can get bored without work to do
• Less social interaction with colleagues
• No more aspiration-based rewards from job

As you can see, there‘s good reasons to retire early and enjoy life but also incentives to keep plugging away at work! At the end of the day, it comes down to your personal play style and priorities…

The Retirement Process Step-By-Step

When retirement rolls around, whether automatically or by choice, here‘s exactly what goes down:

1. A pop-up notification alerts you it‘s time to retire
2. The Sim immediately ceases their career duties and schedule
3. They begin receiving a pension each morning
4. Skills, relationships, possessions stay the same
5. Sim is now considered unemployed

The pension amount will vary based on their peak career performance and tenure…

As you can see, the shift into retirement is seamless and straightforward! Though it takes some getting used to not having them march off to work each morning.

One key tip here – have them teach their skills…</

Can You Unretire Your Elders?

What if you change your mind and want them back in the workforce? The good news is you can unretire a Sim by simply rejoining a career.

But (and this is key), they will immediately lose access to that precious pension income. So it‘s a tough call whether to relaunch them into work versus enjoying the retired life.

Some clever Simmers have found tricks to unretire AND keep the pension but these often get patched. So I wouldn‘t rely on exploits long term.

In my opinion, it‘s best to leave them retired once you hit that chapter…

Now if you‘ll excuse me, my elder Sim Cassandra is begging me for the tenth time today to feed her cats and read her stories! Being retired doesn‘t mean she gets to slack off completely from her duties you know…

Let me know if have any other Sims retirement questions!