When you retire is a personal decision (and also a financial one but I think for most people on this forum it's mostly a personal one).
That said, if somebody is say counting the days until 55 so that they can retire then it's likely they also wanted to retire pre-55. If the money is "stuck" in a 401k and so they are unwilling to retired beforehand then it probably would've been better for them to have stuck some portion of their 401k contributions into a taxable brokerage account and then retired pre-55.
But in this specific example, the guy I responded to was self-employed I'm kinda guessing their "hobby" is their job and so they kept working despite not needing to.
That said, if somebody is say counting the days until 55 so that they can retire then it's likely they also wanted to retire pre-55. If the money is "stuck" in a 401k and so they are unwilling to retired beforehand then it probably would've been better for them to have stuck some portion of their 401k contributions into a taxable brokerage account and then retired pre-55.
But in this specific example, the guy I responded to was self-employed I'm kinda guessing their "hobby" is their job and so they kept working despite not needing to.