There are many different sorts of handcuffs. Mine was a lucrative defined benefit retirement plan. My (former) company eliminated the plan about 30 years ago,

There are many different sorts of handcuffs. Mine was a lucrative defined benefit retirement plan. My (former) company eliminated the plan about 30 years ago, but grandfathered everyone who was still in the plan. About two years before I was eligible to retire (early), they changed things again and made it impossible to continue contributing to the plan. They offered a temporarily higher match to 401k contributions as compensation. (For the $200k I lost, I got about $20k back.) Eliminating further contributions meant I could no longer increase my retirement payout. Converting the annuity to lump sum (the obvious choice) meant that my lump sum payout would be reduced every day that I continued working there. The net effect was about a 12% reduction in pay. I took the early retirement as soon as allowed, and then took a job elsewhere for a 15% raise. (The reason for the 12% reduction may not be obvious. When converting an annuity, they look at actuaries to estimate when I will die. The lump sum payout converts the annuity payments from the retirement date to the date of my death into one payment, distributed over five years. If I work longer, the time between my retirement and my death decreases. Thus the longer I work without retiring, the lower the payout.) My golden handcuffs were changed into a golden kick in the arse.