Longevity & Aging

No doubt about it: at some point we’re neither semi-retired, findependent or fully retired. We’re out there in a retirement community or retirement home, and maybe for a few years near the end of this incarnation, some time to reflect on it all in a nursing home. Our Longevity & Aging category features our own unique blog posts, as well as blog feeds from Mark Venning’s ChangeRangers.com and other experts.

The Upside of Aging, and why Longevity changes everything

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upsideofagingToday’s blog title comes from Chapter 14 of The Upside of Aging, a book we mentioned several weeks ago at sister site FindependenceDay.com. This is recommended reading for anyone nearing the traditional retirement age. It consists of 16 essays from various experts, all of whom look at the topic of longevity through various lenses: urban planning, global demographics, healthcare and pharmaceutical research and so on. For example, Ken Dychtwald of Age Wave pens an interesting essay titled “A Longevity Market Emerges.”

Pictured below is Dan Houston, president of Retirement, Insurance and Financial Services for the US-based Principal Financial Group, who wrote the chapter I flagged in the title.

Retirees can expect one spouse to reach 90

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Dan Houston

Houston begins by observing that because of longer expected life spans, the mind-set around retirement is evolving, and for the better. “Couples age 65 now have a 45 per cent chance that at least one will live to age 90,” Houston says, citing the Society of Actuaries, “This may be the first time in history where someone spends more years in retirement than in a traditional working career.”

The downside is of course financial: living another 20 to 40 years after leaving the workplace comes with a “substantial cost,” Houston says, “one that has to be funded. It’s an increasingly challenging prospect given inflation, the high cost of health care, and the risk of outliving savings.”

Try living on $400/month

The statistics, at least in the U.S., are not encoring. Fewer than four in ten pre-retiree households (aged 55 to 70, not yet retired) have financial assets of US$100,000. And even if they did have that amount on the nose, it would generate guaranteed lifetime income of just $400 a month.

Many think they’ll need less income in later life than recommended and many plan to draw down on assets at such high rates (9% a year on average) that assets will be depleted within 13 years. The recommended “safe” annual withdrawal rate is closer to 4%. They underestimate the cost of unreimbursed health care costs: in the U.S. Houston estimates a moderately health retired couple will need US$250,000 just to cover health care expenses and premiums throughout retirement. This is one area that Canadians may be ahead because of our universal health care system.

Don’t count on working in retirement

I’ve said before that the solution to this is to “just keep working,” but of course this may not always be an option. It’s a sad fact that agism still prevails in the workplace and costly older workers may be asked to leave before they’re ready to do so; and eventually body or mind may not permit full-time work even if one can find a willing employer. Houston says pre-retirees tend to overestimate their ability to work for income in retirement: more than two thirds expect to be able to supplement retirement income with some work but in reality, only one in five retirees actually works. That statistic, Houston observers, “reflects availability of work, as well as ability to work.”

Just as disturbing is the fact that 55% of American workers, and 39% of retirees, report having a problem with their level of debt. And those who do manage to save are not saving enough: 43% of workers report that neither they nor their spouse is currently saving for the future, while 57% report the total value of savings and investments is under US$25,000.

Four key investment risks

Even where there is ample savings to invest, Houston lists for key risks: inflation, market volatility, income and longevity. These are all linked: the longer you live, the more inflation can cut into your income. Consider this alarming stat on inflation’s power to erode savings: a dollar invested int he S&P500 in 1971 grew to $2.27 by 1982 but on an inflation-adjusted basis, that dollar depreciated to 96 cents. Houston notes that even annual inflation of 3% will cut a retiree’s purchasing power in half.

This calls for investments that have a fighting chance against inflation: Houston mentions Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS, known in Canada as Real Return Bonds or RRBs); commodities, global REITs, natural resource stocks and Master Limited Partnerships.

As if that’s not all enough to keep a retiree awake at night, Houston reminds readers that the “insolvency” date for America’s Social Security system keeps moving closer: 2033, according to Washington’s May 2013 estimate. Meanwhile the over-65 population will double between 2010 and 2050.

As has been noted elsewhere, every day 10,000 baby boomers turn 65. While Canada’s combo of CPP and OAS seems on relatively solid ground, I continue to believe the best way to prepare for a long-lived retirement is to spread your income sources around: employer pensions, savings in RRSPs, TFSAs and non-registered plans, the government plans mentioned above, some part-time work or business income and perhaps rental income from investment real estate.

Plan for Longevity, not Retirement

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Mark Venning, ChangeRangers.com

The above line, “Plan for Longevity, not Retirement,” I have borrowed from Mark Venning, who runs a website about longevity and entrepreneurship at ChangeRangers.com. His latest post, Found Your Findependence?, is about this site’s philosophy about financial independence.

In fact, it was Mark who inspired me to add the “Longevity and Aging” section here at the Financial Independence Hub. We share the belief that the baby boomers approaching the traditional retirement age — and their successors — may live a lot longer than many have planned for.

Let’s retire the word retirement!

If anything should be retired, it should be the word retirement! Apart from his interest in longevity, Mark is a guru to would-be entrepreneurs: even old codgers like me who preferred to try life outside the corporate womb only once a modicum of Findependence had been established. Of course, younger folk who wish to embrace the kind of Change Mark embraces may not need to wait that long.

You can find some of Mark’s recent posts tucked below this section, along with some Agenomics blogs from Lee Anne Davies. Hopefully we’ll be seeing the odd blog from them in the near future but by all means go check their sites out, especially if you agree Findependence means planning not for Retirement, but for Longevity.

Retirement planning for an even longer life

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Good piece in USA Today this weekend by Robert Powell. He notes we now have to add another two years of life to our retirement calculations: the average American 65-year old man can now expect to live to 88.8 years, up from 86.4 in 2000, according to the Society of Actuaries. Similar trends apply to women.

This means that instead of saving for enough to last 21.4 years in retirement, a nest egg has to last at least 23.8 years: perhaps another $100,000 of savings will be needed, Powell suggests.

Or you could do what the Findependence philosophy advocates and just keep working a bit longer, or supplement retirement income sources with some part-time work.

Check out ChangeRangers.com and the Agenomics blogs below

We’ve blogged on this theme before, as has Mark Venning of ChangeRangers.com, whose blog we feature in this Longevity & Aging section of the Hub. Venning has long argued that we need to be planning not for retirement, but for longevity. The other featured blog is Agenomics.ca by Lee-Anne Davies. To find them, click here to get to the Longevity & Aging section of the Hub, then scroll down below this article and another.

The downside of rising longevity – dementia

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By Jonathan Chevreau

One of the themes I’ve been exploring lately has been longevity – the notion that most of us can expect to live longer than our parents and grandparents. That assumes a lot of things, such as adopting healthy lifestyles, being blessed with good genes and not engaging in harmful behaviours. And of course, as the current Ebola scare reminds us, there’s no shortage of external circumstances that can render moot the idea of extended personal longevity.

But let’s be optimistic. If financial planners reckon on a lifespan of 90 or 95 years for the average client, let’s assume we at least reach our 90s. The unfortunate aspect of this is that while our good habits and advances in medical science may stave off such unwelcome events as heart disease or cancer, it also means there is a greater chance of succumbing to dementia. As RBC Dominion Securities investment adviser Nathan Mechanic told me many years ago, Alzheimer’s can have a devastating effect on family finances.

Dementia portrayed in essays and novels

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On my recent trip to Turkey, I happened to read some books that touched independently on the theme of the scourge of Alzheimer’s. One was an essay by novelist Jonathan Franzen entitled “My Father’s Brain,” contained in his collection, How to Be Alone. In it, Franzen chronicled the slow and painful loss of his father Earl to Alzheimer’s. He depicted it as a series of deaths of various capabilities: memory, mobility etc., wherein the actual physical death of the whole body was merely the final installment of a drama that unfolded over several years.

On a similar theme is Still Alice, a novelized treatment of Alzheimer’s written by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. Written in 2007, it portrays the onset of early Alzheimer’s at age 50 of cognitive psychology professor Alice Howland. It was turned into a film of the same name in 2014. For those who enjoy medical thrillers. Genova has been described as “the Michael Crichton of brain science.”

100 tips to stave off dementia’s onset

100thingsI also read an e-book I’d recommend to anyone interested in this topic, or who may already have gone through the experience with a parent or other loved family member. It’s called 100 Simple Things you can do to Prevent Alzheimer’s and Age-Related Memory Loss, by Jean Carper. The book was published in 2010 and the author dedicated it to her mother, Natella, who made it to 95 without dementia but spent a “final year with probable vascular dementia.”

I’d guess many baby boomers will be in a similar situation by the end of their long lives: 90 or 95 years of relatively strong mental health, followed by a year or two of this type of loss of mental acuity. So what are the 100 tips we can act on to minimize our chances of being afflicted with dementia? Here are some of the main ones that left an impression on me. Number one is to “Get Smart About Alcohol.” It stands to reason that excess drinking cannot be a good thing for our brain cells, although Carper concedes the benefits of modest (a glass or two) of red wine on occasion. And rest assured, chocolate lovers, you may be able to safely indulge in similarly modest consumption of dark chocolate, but less so milk or white chocolate. And yes, it’s okay to “say yes to coffee” and we don’t need to be afraid of caffeine.

Carper also recommends drinking apple juice or “juices of all kinds,” eating berries every day, eating curry, nuts, olive oil, spinach, tea, vinegar, fish and various other good foods. She recommends the Mediterranean Diet. And yes, exercise is a fine thing even if it’s just fast-paced walking. Sleep is important and meditation is helpful. It helps to be married and have a large social circle. Avoid red meat, avoid inactivity, beware the dangers of fast foods, control bad cholesterol and avoid environmental toxins.

If you have an interesting job, don’t be too quick to retire: work is an excellent way to keep your brain active. Alternatively, web surfers will be pleased to learn “Googling” is good for the brain, as are video games. So is learning another language. Build strong muscles, take multivitamins, and take regular nature hikes. The author even suggests “considering” medical marijuana, assuming it doesn’t entail breaking the law. But “forget about smoking” cigarettes and cut down on sugar.

Much of this is common sense and you may have heard some of these tips before. But if you can tick off more than half these items, my bet is you will have made a great start in delaying the onset of this affliction for yourself or anyone you love.