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June 07, 2012 at 11:38 AM
On January 1, 2011, the first Baby Boomers turned 65, thus beginning the collective retirement of the Boomers, one of the greatest financial migrations in history. But as anybody who endured the financial bruising of the Great Recession can attest, a lot of people who were in the home stretch to retirement saw their retirement severely downgraded, or postponed for several years, by the beating their investment portfolios took when the world financial markets melted down.
At the same time, insurers have begun to market the notion of “longevity risk,” that is, the possbility of outliving one’s retirement savings. Longevity risk is predicated more on the likelihood that one simply has not saved enough and/or had too much of their nest egg robbed by market volatility. In an age where pensions are a thing of the past and the future of Social Security remains ever in question, longevity risk has become a pressing concern indeed for anybody even approaching the age of 60 these days.
But longevity risk also has something to do with a double-edged miracle futurists expect to occur eventually: a medical breakthrough that will suddenly and radically extend our lifespans. Living to 130 sounds great until you suddenly realize that you don’t know how to pay the rent for those extra 50 years.
With the actual retirement age for many people pushing back by at least a few years, the prospect facing most Boomers today is that they will most likely have to work at least a little if they want to maintain their pre-retirement lifestyle and afford the inevitable increase in health care costs that come with older age. Retirement planners have long used as a spur to clients the grim prospect of being a Wal-Mart greeter during the years they were supposed to be RVing across the country, sipping lemonade and visiting with grandchildren. Now, that seems less like a worst-case scenario and more of a new normal where people can expect their primary careers to end between 60 and 70 and to have to come up with some kind of second act to sustain themselves for the rest of their days.
The big question is: is this such a bad thing? My dearly departed father, an attorney, never had any plans to retire and he practiced law until the day came when he was too ill to do otherwise. He loved his work, and his work was to some degree his recreation as well. What the heck was he going to even do with himself if he didn’t need to go to his office every day?
