People Are Expected to Live Longer, but There's a Catch
More people are expected to live beyond 100 according to Age Wave CEO Ken Dychtwald, a thought leader and expert on the aging population.
“Two-thirds of all the people that have ever lived past 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today – so longevity is already upon us,” Dychtwald said during an exclusive interview on the FOX Business Network. “But in the decades to come we are going to see more and more breakthroughs so that a lot our kids living [to 120 or 150] won’t be outrageous.”
While this may be good news overall, people will have to think about how they will pay for those extra years of life, he said.
Dychtwald recently teamed up with Bank of America Merrill Lynch on a study, which revealed 81% of people don’t know how much money they will need to fund their retirement.
“When we talk about money in the abstract, how much money do I need in the bank? People can’t relate to it,” said BAML Managing Director Surya Kolluri. “We have identified that people want to think about it in terms of how they live their lives.”
Kolluri added people were most concerned about health.
“People really think about when I plan for retirement or my longer life – the dimensions of healthcare becomes very important,” he said.
Even as people want to live longer, they also want to work longer, said Dychtwald.
“We asked pre-retirees, ‘what do you think you’re going to miss when you stop working?’ – and they said they thought they’d miss the check,” he said. “Then we asked thousands of retirees…’What do you miss the most?’ – and they miss the action, they miss the stimulation, they miss the reason to get up in the morning – but they don’t want to work full time.”
Even so, Dychtwald thinks this could be a new trend.
“I think what we’re going to see is more and more people in their 60’s and maybe 70’s doing part-time work or encore jobs or driving for Uber or Lyft or starting their own business,” he said. “That allows you to have more money and to build your nest egg for a little longer period if you’re going to have that longer life.”
Kolluri added: “Seventy-three percent of the folks that we surveyed said they want to continue working…but on their terms. Inside that, 40% said they would like to start a business and would like to get skills to be able to do so – so financial education later in life is going to be a pretty important consideration.”