reason : A Future in Which You Won't Be Forced to Retire

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A Future in Which You Won't Be Forced to Retire

(Crossposted from Fight Aging!)

I was prompted back to thinking about the present cultural norms of retirement and long-term financial planning by a couple of posts encountered while browsing the blogosphere:

How Much Do You Need for Retirement If You're Going to Live a Very, Very Long Time?

What happens as we approach Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, and beyond that, The Singularity? I think the short answer is that, at first you'll need a lot more money, and later not so much.
First of all, when SENS gets going, it will not be cheap. Intelligent people have already made the lifestyle changes necessary to add years to their lives, so when SENS comes along, they'll want to have it. Even now, clinics that specialize in hormone treatments with growth hormone and testosterone and the like can cost up to $10,000 a year or more, and the clinics are growing. Plenty of customers available who will spend that kind of money. SENS will likely cost a lot more in the beginning. And if you're chugging along on a Social Security check you won't be able to afford it. What this means is that not too far into the future, having an adequate amount saved for retirement can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Some time ago, I laid out guesstimates and rationales as to what you should be prepared to spend on the first generation of rejuvenation therapies that actually work. The numbers are intimidating until you realize that most people in a country like the US could, in fact, save and invest enough over a lifetime to afford it.

Methuselah's Retirement Plan:

In 25 years, I'll be in my late 70s, right at the limit of current life expectancy for an American man, though by the time I get there, conventional medicine and scientific progress will no doubt have increased that somewhat. So the challenge is to make it that long in reasonably good health in order to be alive to take advantage of [robust human rejuvenation (RHR)]. As I said before, you're going to want to have a nice little pile stashed in your retirement accounts to be able to afford the first manifestations of RHR. It won't be cheap, although no doubt the prices will rapidly decline. On the other hand, new forms of therapy will continue to be discovered, and none of them will be cheap to begin with. And as I also said, those without sufficient funds and just on the wrong side of the aging curve will... die.
...
What else? Don't retire. Retirement can cause serious deterioration in mental and physical health. Now is not the time to consider it. Sorry. I know that if you're like me, you've dreamed and planned of retirement, getting away from that boring job, hitting the beach etc. A better plan would be to find a job that you like, and if that takes retraining, then do it, because after all you're going to live a very long time. Right?

It is a positive development to see more folk pondering these questions; the truth of convictions lies not in what people say, but rather in their long-term financial plans and actions. Growing awareness of the potential for gains in healthy life span and support for healthy life extension research will translate into changing investment and retirement planning when people are really, truly sold on this future.

As I've pointed out before, the medical technologies of decades to come are far from a sure thing for those of us old enough to have long-term financial plans in progress. They only surity here is that the more you save - and the better care you take of your health now - the more likely it is you'll be able to take advantage of the first real anti-aging medicine when it arrives. Fail to save, and you'll have pushed back your access to these technologies for the time it takes to go from first (expensive) entry into the commercial market to (cheap, reliable) widespread availability - which seems to be about 20 to 30 years these days.

I'm sure you can run the numbers on your life expectancy and just what a 20 to 30 year delay would do to your chances of using ever better medical technologies as stepping stones to an era of radical life extension. Fail to save and you're all too likely sentencing your future self to greater suffering and an early death.

Once you get there, however, why retire? Retirement as it presently stands is forced upon us by increasing frailty and the depredations of age-related disease. If you're healthy and active, why quit at a point after you've finally engineered your working life into something you enjoy and profit from? As things presently stand, people compress a lifetime of vacation into their final years precisely because they become unable to further grow their wealth through wages, entrepreneurial activities and other work.

The economic realities that drive the present culture of savings and retirement will be up-ended in the decades ahead, provided that medical science advances rapidly towards healthy life extension therapies. You are likely to have amazing options awaiting you in terms of exchanging comparatively modest invested wealth for additional healthy years of life - options that are presently unavailable even to billionaires. You should take a careful look at your financial plans for the future, and make sure you are prepared to catch the wave as it rises.

Published Friday, July 14, 2006 5:26 PM by reason

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	EschewObfuscation wrote on July 15, 2006 2:48 PM I think many (most?) people think it impossible to enjoy as well as profit from work, and find never retiring to be a strong negative for life extension.
	CP wrote on July 16, 2006 10:45 AM FORCED to retire? I couldn't wait!
	gnorb wrote on July 16, 2006 10:54 PM EschewObfuscation: That all depends on what you call "work". If work to you is the drudgery of a 8-5 job day in, day out, where you're forced to be around people you don't like and do things you'd rather not be doing, then yes, I can see where never retiring becomes a strong negative. Heck, I can't figure out why people put up with that crap for 40+ years, only to "retire", find out they weren't ready for retirement, then have to go work at Wal-Mart to make ends meet. (By the time workers reach 65, most will either be dead, require either government assistance, go to live with family, take another low-paying job, or simply be dead. Only the top 4% will be able to afford to sustain themselves, 1% of which will be considered wealthy. Furthermore, out of those that work 'till they're 65, most only end up living another 18 months on the average, while people who retire 10 years earlier usually are able to live well into their 80's on the average.) If, on the other hand, you actually truly enjoy and love what you do -- for example, a musician -- then why give in to the ravages of aging? I'll give you my own example: I own my own company. During my day, I get to work with people from all walks of life, teaching them how to run businesses and helping them achieve many of their goals, while at the same time learning from them and their experiences. Frankly, I love what I do. And yes, it is profitable. Is it work? Absolutely: I would hardly call what I do all "fun and games." In fact, there are times when I have to do something or be somewhere I don't want to be or have to do. Still, I'd gladly take that over retiring to do nothing but play shuffleboard or watch the grass grow. The only way I would take a work-free retirement is if I found another activity to keep me growing mentally while retired, such as archeology, wilderness exploration, or -- well, studying longevity techniques, all of which I suppose could be construed as work. Frankly, I think it all boils down to this: in whatever you're doing, are you working towards what you consider to be a worthwhile goal? (This is defined as something you believe gives your life some meaning other than the cycle of "sleep, eat, poop, repeat" most people get unwittingly stuck in, or something which allows you to create something greater than yourself.) If the answer is yes, then you'll want to keep doing it and would rather it not be hampered by something as essentially trivial as deteriorating health and having to retire. If the answer is no then... well, then you've probably not spent much time at an old folks home. Better yet, go to McDonalds during the daytime and ask anyone older than about 55 what they'd rather be doing if money wasn't an issue. I can almost guarantee you they wouldn't say "flipping burgers here and saying 'yes sir' to my 19 year old grandson/boss." I have a number of friends who got to retire at an early age. All of them without exception, tried the whole "retire to do pretty much nothing" deal, only to end up back in the thick of things within a year and a half, tops. That's because man needs to work towards a known goal, and -- this is my belief -- needs to continually work and achieve in order to feel that he has the right to feel good about himself. Man is only happy for a few minutes after a goal has been achieved before he feels he must again begin to work towards some greater height. It is in the process of achieving that man truly is able to find meaning. (Sorry, didn't mean to rant.)
	aldersondrive2007 wrote on July 17, 2006 12:13 PM If one lives long enough and saves anything at all, the laws of compound interest are enough to ensure that one will become as wealthy as one disires, provided you spend less than you earn for a long enough period of time. Also, if the law of accelarating returns proves itself out, than the next thing will be for the same curve that we have seen in high technology to begin transferring it's benefits to medicine, manufacturing and food production. Than the cost of living, at least outside of real estate, can start to plummit of the next half century. Even real estate can be a non issue, if it become inexpensive enough to either build higher into the sky, or to excavate deeper into the Earth. The next struggle in that time, will be for people to find fulfillment in their relationships and "work" ( whatever work will be later in the century).
	jwbats wrote on July 17, 2006 12:47 PM "SENS will likely cost a lot more in the beginning." Don't agree with that for two reasons: 1. Preventing disease is way cheaper than recovering from it. I think the state will push and deal out rejuvenation therapies in order to cut healthcare costs. 2. Nanotechnology is set to make medicare cheap. Think nanochips to diagnose cancercells years before they actually give you cancer. People will become more knowledgeable about what's going on in their own bodies. This will enable them to act accordingly (change diet in order to prevent disease, etc.). Just from knowing what your body's up to, I'd say it's entirely feasible for a person to live 10 years longer than he/she would have normally (that is: without diag-nanotech) done.
	Mr. Farlops wrote on July 18, 2006 5:47 PM People put up with lousy jobs because often they have no choice. The economy can only support so many plum careers and retraining is often so expensive, inefficient and time consuming, that it simply isn't an option for many people. This is why some careers place so many qualification hurdles in the way. Doctors and lawyers make a lot of money, yet, to be frank, the amount of education _needed_ to be one is rather small* in comparison to the amount they force you to take before you can qualify. Supply far outstrips demand. On the other hand, fast food places have extremely high turnover and go hat in hand looking for kids and desparate people willing to endure the pressure and drugery. Once all the ambition, talent and creativity is crushed out of you by work and the educational system, you resign yourself, because you have bills to pay, to doing the same damn horrible thing day in and day out for decades. If they'll let you, that is. These days even that's not certain. If there's anything the last 37 years of education and work have taught me, it's don't trust anything. The vast majority of small companies fold, big companies gamble your pension and benefits away on the stock market--legally or illegally--and the no one wants to pay the government for old age stipends or worker's compensation anymore. Retirement stinks. I know I'll never see it. I only hope that I can afford to rejuvenate when aging is cured. The drugery required by our post-modern, post-post-modern economy is easier to endure with a young body and brain. Phew! Rather depressing comment there. Hm. Well this post struck a nerve I guess. * Nurses and paramedics know pretty much all there is needed to know to handle most medical matters. Surgery is really a matter of practice and experience. Medical research is science and engineering--not really the same as being a doctor. Most doctors are now merely glorified administrators, the nurses do all the real work.