In my case. It was the economy. In the crash of 2008, I lost a job where I'd been for over 10 years, at the age of 58. I continued working off and on for the next few years, but all I could find were temp gigs, with no benefits, sometimes with long empty stretches in between one job and the next. The whole experience was so demoralizing and soul-sucking that I gave up and started collecting SS as soon as I was old enough. I did take one more temp job after that, in the hope that it would turn into something more "permanent," but that did not happen. After I was laid off from that, I didn't have it in me to try again.
My husband worked a lot longer than I did, but was hoping to retire soon, when factory where he worked went bottom up due to some poor management decisions. Since then, we have been pinching pennies.
Of the two forced "retirements," mine was the most traumatic, financially and otherwise, but both sucked. 
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