Are you prepared to live to 100 years old?
Until now the only thought it prompted in my head was ‘Oh I’ll get a birthday card from the Queen!’ (Although Charlie will have to add that to his to-do list now). But after reading a very thought-provoking book by Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott there are so many more aspects that didn’t even cross my mind. Am I financially prepared to support myself for that long? Mentally prepared? Physically prepared? Most people I would assume, think and plan in 1, 5 or even 10 years spans, but planning your life until you are 100 years old… Is that even possible?
The reason for the book is that life span expectancy is increasing. A Japanese child born in 2014 is predicted to have a 50% chance of reaching 109. For the UK, life expectancy has increased from 71 in 1960, to 82 in 2022 and will only keep rising. A combination of access to medical treatment, healthier lifestyles and safer working conditions have meant that we are living in the age of longevity. Only a good thing, right?
The Financials.
The problem is that in 1961 the normal pattern was the ‘three stage life’. Education, work and retirement. This fit nicely with the life expectancy and meant people left school at 18, worked until they were 60 and then retired on the state pension of £149.50. This is £4,694 in today’s money, a 3,039% increase which sounds very generous however before you write Rachael Reeves a thank you letter, consider that the cost of goods and services have risen 3,029.6% in that time, so almost exactly comparable to the cost of living today. A cigarette packet calculation can tell you the average pension pot in 1960 would be around £1,644.5 to last for the next 11 years, or £51,482 today.
Now let’s go back to our life expectancy. The state pension has been raised to £11,973 from April 2025, so if you wanted to retire at 60 you will now have support of £263,406 until you reach 82. Sounds like a lot of money, right? Well, the cost of living moderately comfortably for a single pensioner in the UK is around £31,300 a year, almost THREE TIMES the allowance.
Now let’s bring in our 100-year life. As a 31-year male writing this blog, I have a 10% chance of reaching 99 years old. If you’re a 31-year-old female reading this, you have a 10% chance of reaching 101. The retirement age has been increased to 66 so if we assume we retire at that age we will need… £1,064,200. Over a million pounds. To live moderately comfortably. No cruising around the Caribbean. No 5-bed house in the countryside. No expensive hobbies. Just getting by.
I don’t know about you, but I doubt I’ll have a spare million pounds lying around and if I don’t win the lottery or find the next Bitcoin I’m going to have to rethink my future, along with many people reading this blog.
If we bring that retirement age up to 85 then the number looks a bit better. For 15 years I’ll need £469,500 to live comfortably and get 38% of that from my state pension (£180K). Obviously, this isn’t taking account the rise in both the state pension and cost of living but who knows what the economic climate will look like in 2079? Elon Musk starting a new colony on Mars? (Probably still tweeting about replacing the Prime Minister). Greggs opening their 86th site in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne? Manchester City relegated from division 3 after a 300-point deduction? (We can dream).
If people my age continue saving and investing now, then we should be on track to cover the difference, but as a generation, we’re running the race with only one shoe. The total debt of 18-29 year olds in the US alone is $1.2 trillion according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorkaccording to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. We live in a magpie-like society obsessed with the newest shiny bit of tech, and with the rise of ‘Buy now, pay later’ from companies like Klarna taking advantage, is it finally time to cancel the Netflix subscription and start buying second-hand clothes after all?
The Career.
This bring up another issue… working until I’m 85? What job am I going to do then? In a world where ageism is rife in recruitment (according to a Total Jobs survey, 42% of HR professionals feel under pressure to recruit younger staff), being a protected characteristic is not enough to shield older applicants from bias across all industries. At the other end, there are already plummeting fertility rates. Globally, it’s halved since 1960 from 5.3 children per woman to just 2.1 and may continue to fall further given changing attitudes to having children. If this halves again in the next 50 years, there will need to be a complete shift in attitudes towards older generations working as they will make up most of the workforce.
Not only that, but the workplace will look drastically different in 54 years. Since 1940, 60% of occupations are now obsolete and the rate of change is exponentially increasing. With the explosion on AI on the scene the figures are staggering. Artificial intelligence is set to replace 300 million jobs globally by 2030… in the next 5 years. At this rate there will be entire industries that will cease to exist in 50 years times, not just jobs.
Gone are the days where you could stick it out for 40 years in the same job, collect your company pen, or engraved paperweight at 65 and retire into the sunset. We’re already seeing changes in employment with ‘The Great Resignation’ after the pandemic and the addition of terms like ‘quiet quitting’ (doing just the minimum to not get fired) and ‘toxic workplace culture’ (Think the Death Star with less lasers and more free fruit). Individual’s careers are becoming much more fluid with people changing jobs, career paths, and the even industries halfway through their life.
And if we’re going to live to 100, then this is the only way forward. Obviously, a physically demanding role will be out of the question, so we will have to offer the one thing that we will have more than anyone. Wisdom and experience. Is there some sort of consultative role we can step into post 65? The benefit of gaining qualifications and expertise throughout your career now becomes essential to develop that into income in your later life.
Education is a key factor to consider here.
Currently affiliated with the start of your life, college and university will need to be spread across your career instead. The extra time you have could be spent gaining a qualification in your industry to assist in later life opportunities, or even learning something completely new. As I write this in 2024, I have no idea what I might need to learn in 2050, but it seems more important to keep up to date with what is changing around you.
This also highlights the need for remote working. CEOs on Wall Street can complain all they want about their staff taking naps during the working day, but surely the ability to work from home is the only way someone in their later life is able to work. Was the remote working revolution a necessary step in changing the workplace for the better in the long run?
I had a paper round when I was 13, getting up at 5:45 am every day for a year… I’m still astounded I managed that. If I keep going until 85 then I’ll have worked for 72 years. Let’s take 30 days off every year for holidays and 104 days a year for weekends that’s 230 days working every year for 72 years. That’s 16,560 days or 63% of every year of my working life. Grim.
It’s surely impossible to stay at peak efficiency and focus for that length of time without burning out, and a long weekend in the Cotswolds isn’t going to cut it long term. People in my generation will need to take longer breaks. Sabbaticals to travel, spend time with family, explore other hobbies, anything but more work. The companies that will prosper and do well won’t be the ones watching their employees on webcams and monitoring their mouse activity. They will be the ones who offer these paid breaks and the flexibility to make all this easier. Compressed hours, 4-day weeks, remote working, extended leave, etc. Remember that grim calculation from a moment ago? A 4-day week for example would mean working less than half your working life at 49%. That’s more than an extra 4000 days to spend with your family, your children, your hobbies, your side hustles, your education, your health, your fitness, your aspirations and goals.
The Emotional.
Then there’s the question of the toll of this on your mental well-being.
Most people I speak to about this turn their noses up in disgust at the thought of working that late in life. Shouts of “There’s no way I’ll be working at that age” and “I’ll retire early and go on 4 holidays a year”. Oh, will you now? Well just put down the passport for a second.
Retirement isn’t an easy ride emotionally, with 38% struggling with the lack of structure and 50% of women and 28% of men citing loneliness. If we do live to 100 then that’s the best part of 40 years to spend not working. As human beings, we all need a purpose, structure, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Something to consider before you book out that sun lounger for the entire summer.
The Relationships
The solution presented of mixing up the three-stage life and adding travel, education and sabbaticals sounds great for a single person, but what about the people around them? As soon as you include marriage and children then it becomes much more complicated (nothing new there obviously). The average age of a mother and father in the UK are 30.9 and 33.7 respectively which means that by the time their children are ready to fly the nest they will be in their early 50s and still have 30-35 years of working life left, before another 15-20 years of retirement. THIS will be the new mid-life crisis of many families. At such a pivotal moment in your life you must choose what path your career will take as well as supporting your children, and their children.
What about those that don’t marry? Or don’t have children? As a growing number of Millennials and Gen Z’s will dismiss the traditional lives of their grandparents, who is left in their lives to support them? It’s great in your 20s when you have lots of places and opportunities to meet people like yourselves but what happens as you get older? When you get to 50, around 90% of us will have at least one close friend, but almost half of older adults with fair or poor mental health (47%) said they do not have enough close friends.
I’ll turn my attention back to those people adamant they want to stick to the three-stage life. How long into retirement will you miss the connection with people from your workplace and the opportunities to make friends? 5 years? 20 years? What about after 35 years of gardening? Those petunias may look nice, but they won’t laugh at your jokes.
If we’re going to stand any chance of sanity in the second part of our lives, we’re going to have to shift our focus towards working hard at building and sustaining these relationships. It’s something that I’m already finding difficult even in my 30s. I’ve realised that friendships very gradually disappear if you don’t make the effort.
The Solution
I know this is all a bit morbid. I don’t mean it to be. It’s exciting! Your life is a blank canvas and all that. Live, laugh, love. I got to the end of the book expecting some golden nugget of wisdom, the answer to all these problems but of course, there wasn’t. It’s impossible to plan your life too accurately.
Even after all of this, it still doesn’t consider tragedy, sickness, bankruptcy, redundancy, any number of things that can and will go wrong in life. It’s all well and good to say you’re going to reskill at 60 but life isn’t as straightforward as reading a book with all the answers in.
I realise that the real solution is just the awareness of it all and starting to make smart decisions now. Can you tuck some money away into an ISA every month? Can you exercise a bit more and quit some vices that may turn into something nasty in 40 years’ time? Can you reach out to that friend and get dinner with them? Can you look at a free course online to add to your CV or grow your skill in one of your hobbies?
We all just want to live a fulfilling life and be happy, however long it lasts. But if my generation and those that follow want to do that, we’re going to have to start (loosely) planning for it more now.
Blog written by Ben Jones
