John Hancock says people might live to 130 and break retirement
Americans scored 60 out of 100 on a new retirement index.
The short version
- Wayne Park runs John Hancock Financial, a major insurance company.
- He says people might live to 130 years old someday.
- The traditional retirement age of 65 is based on the past.
Get ready to rethink everything you know about retirement and family inheritance. Wayne Park, who runs John Hancock Financial, a major insurance company, says people might live as long as 130 someday. According to Fortune, a new national index measuring how ready Americans are for long retirements scored the country 60 out of 100, which is considered a solid D. The traditional retirement age of 65 was set when life expectancy was much shorter, with Germany adopting 70 to 65 in 1916 and the United States adopting it for Social Security in 1935.
Joe Coughlin, who founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab in 1999, points out that the expected Great Wealth Transfer from baby boomers to their children might be oversold or delayed. Wealth usually transfers to a surviving spouse first, stretching the process across decades as people live longer lives.
Coughlin calls the new index a road map for unfamiliar territory as society figures out What to do with extra decades. Park warns that living longer requires more years of income to fund, putting heavy pressure on personal savings and public systems.
The real gap between generations is not just about money, but about changing expectations for a longer life. If your savings plan assumes you will stop working at 65 and live another 20 years, you might need a brand new calculator.
