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.
Unretirement is a concept not unlike Findependence or Financial Independence; it’s also the title of a recently published book by Chris Farrell, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist and senior economics contributor for American Public Media’s syndicated radio show, Marketplace.
I’ve also seen the term Unretirement used by Sun Life Financial in Canada but that seems to be more a marketing term the company uses to promote its surveys on traditional retirement. That survey has been going for six years now, which certainly predates the publication of Farrell’s UnretirementContinue Reading…
As mentioned in the MoneySense version of the blog, one of the readers highlighted — Oakville-based David Davidson — also sent along a photograph of himself, which we’re running here (on the left).
What this all comes down to, and as I commented on Twitter after the original MoneySense blog was posted, is that “Retirement planning would be so much easier if we just knew the exact date of our death!”
Of course, few of us know that so there’s always going to be a tradeoff between planning for a long life that never materializes; and under-saving and living in the present, only to find yourself running out of money before you run out of life. Personally, I’d rather err on the side of the first possibility but as you can see below, some readers (including David shown above), make the case for the second possibility, or a balance between either extreme. Some on Twitter are in the same camp, including Ryan (@simplemoolah):
“LOL. Since we don’t — Don’t blow it all today. Live in the present & enjoy every moment but also plan for your future.”
“Alzheimer’s disease – the degenerative brain condition that is not content to simply kill its victims, it must first snuff out their essence.” – Time Magazine, October 31, 2010
By age 85, an individual has a 50% chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a matter of a flipping a coin. Chances are if you don’t have Alzheimer’s, you will be caring for someone who does.
The Grim Statistics about Dementia
• The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease is reaching epidemic proportions. Today, 500,000 Canadians have the disease or a related dementia.
• Alzheimer’s disease is considered the second most feared disease of aging.
• While 1: 11 people 65 years of age and older suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, 71,000 Canadians < 65 have the disease.
• It is estimated that one person is diagnosed every five minutes and it is projected that by 2035, 1.1 million Canadians will be living with Alzheimer’ or a related dementia. Continue Reading…
Here’s my column from the print edition of MoneySense magazine that’s being run online today at MoneySense.ca. Regular readers here at the Aging & Longevity section of the Financial Independence Hub will recognize several of the major themes.
In particular, they will note the phrase “Plan for Longevity, Not Retirement,” which I credit to Mark Venning of ChangeRangers.com, whose blog occasionally can be seen in this section.
The question may sound absurd but if you are a healthy Canadian in your 40s having a 40-year retirement is not just possible but very likely.
According to the World Health Organization, a male’s life expectancy in Canada is 80 and 84 if you are female. Let’s take the half-way point between 84 and 80 and say longevity will be age 82.
The median retirement age in 2011 was 63.2 for men and 61.4 for women. The half-way point will be age 62. It seems logical to calculate your retirement years as your life expectancy minus the age in the year in which you retire. If you retire at age 62 and expect to live to age 82 then you should save up enough money to generate income for 20 years right? Wrong!
Planning for your retirement paycheque is a lot more complicated. Life expectancy is a moving target. In Canada, we have increased life expectancy by 5 years over the past 25 years. Increased life expectancy has been consistent for decades and there’s no indication it will stop.
If we continue at this pace, we will add 10 additional years of longevity within the next 50 years. If you are in your 40s today, it’s quite reasonable to expect your life expectancy will increase from 82 to 92. But now it gets even more complicated. Life expectancy for a surviving spouse is longer than an individual’s. As long as one or both spouses survive, savings are required to support their retirement.
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By Jonathan Chevreau
