“I’ve enjoyed reading your articles about retirement, but I figure I’ll retire when I’m 107!”

My friend said this as they were walking away from our morning coffee meeting. I’m sure it was meant to be funny, but it’s been on my mind for a few weeks now.

For one thing, we’re living longer and that may affect the relationship between how long we work, and how long we live in retirement.

“The person has already been born in the U.S. who will live to 150 years old.” While this has been attributed to different sources, I first heard it in a presentation by Dan Buettner of the Blue Zones Project several years ago. 

I think my friend’s comment was directed towards the financial aspects, but the comment got me thinking. What will retirement look like for people who live well into their 100s? They could be “in retirement” for 40-50 years! I have many questions, but 3 kept coming back to me:

What will we do with all that time? It’s likely that we’ll have many different roles in retirement. We may have work-related roles; different and more flexible than our full-time careers, but that provide both income and an outlet for engaging our minds. Our roles may be as caregivers, hobbyists, mentors to family and friends, volunteers, etc.

How will we fund that time? I’ve sometimes scoffed when our financial planners tell us to consider living to 95 or 100. It’s rare that it happens, so do I really need to plan for such an ‘edge case?’ But as the frequency of living past 100 increases we’ll see people considering the impacts of needing to fund many decades of living without income.

How can we prepare for so much time? Well, I’m not sure I know how to prepare for 30, 40 or 50 years of retirement. But it does strike me that one thing we’ll need to be good at is reinventing ourselves. The early years of retirement may be energetic and include travel and volunteering. The latter years are likely to be less physically engaging but potentially more thoughtful. How might we help others? How can we leave a legacy?

Regardless of how long we live, planning for how to fund and enjoy many years of retirement is prudent. And, of course, I’ll always advocate for stair-stepping that journey – start to free up time from your full-time work so you can explore other interests.

You’ll be glad you did when you consider you have decades ahead of you!