Fewer Delay Retirement as Economy Improves

"It's encouraging to see more workers have the option to retire if they want to, but there are still some who want to keep working at their companies for a variety of reasons," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder.

More than two-thirds said they wanted to keep working because they enjoyed their job or where they worked, 26 percent said it was because they feared retirement may be boring and an adorable 14 percent said it was because they just enjoyed feeling needed.

Salt said there's a running joke among her clients, many of whom are professionals who run their own businesses like doctors, accountants, architects and engineers. "I always hear, 'I'm going to retire in five years,'" Salt said. "You talk to them two years after that and they say, 'I'm going to retire in five years. It's always five years!"

Another factor keeping the self-employed working is worries about succession. They're just not sure who in the subsequent generations will be able to take over their business.

The return of the stock market -- and retirement accounts -- has been a boom to consumer confidence but some worries still linger.

"[M]any Americans have dipped into their retirement savings to pay for necessities, or they have stopped contributing altogether," said Mary Liz Burns, a spokeswoman for AARP. "The market has been increasing in value as of late, but most Americans have not made up the retirement account losses that they have faced since the start of the recession."

And, let's face it -- the wounds of the financial crisis are still fresh.

"People have seen their plans come up from meltdown levels but they're concerned they're not going to see the growth that they did in the past," Salt said. "The rug was really pulled out from underneath us on a variety of levels and once you've been through something like this, it's like 'Once bitten, twice shy.'"

-- Written by Cindy Perman of CNBC

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