A Long Life: Curse or Blessing?
Captain Tom Moore with his No 1 trophy. Photograph: Emma Sohl/Guardian
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, an elderly retired army veteran started a sponsored walk around his garden to raise £1,000 for health charities. Three weeks later, Captain Tom Moore reached his 100th birthday and had raised over £30m.
Captain Tom's achievement of raising so much money was remarkable but reaching his 100th birthday wasn't.
Although you might not know many centenarians, their numbers are growing. In fact, in most advanced economies, there is a 50% likelihood of a child born in 2007 living beyond 100. In 2107 reaching 100 will be the norm, not the exception.*
A Curse or a Blessing
It will be a curse if you haven't managed to accumulate sufficient financial assets to support a longer life after you can't or no longer wish to work. And it won't be much fun if those additional years are spent in poor health that was caused by working yourself to a frazzle.
But a longer life can be a blessing if you make wise lifestyle (working, consumption and health) and financial (earning, spending and investing) choices throughout your early and most productive years.
In a new book, The New Long Life, two professors from the London Business School suggest that we need to move on from a three-stage life of education, work and retirement.
The authors believe that:
We'll need to work for longer to accumulate enough financial assets, but that work will need to be less intensive to enable us to maintain good health for a longer life;
There will need to be a greater focus on lifelong learning, training, retraining and skills, to stay relevant and employable in the face of technological advances and changing economics;
Greater gender fairness is essential when it comes to caring responsibilities;
Employers need to give staff and contractors greater flexibility over working patterns, conditions and remuneration.
Catalyst For Change
I think that COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses of our current economic model and how the majority of us live and work. It will, therefore, accelerate the changes that will be necessary in a world of longer life and rapid technological advances.
Expect to see more home working, more second and third careers, more equal caring responsibilities, and many more life transitions. Expect offices and city centres to become more residential and workers to be more dispersed. Expect side hustles and start ups to become the norm.
But perhaps the most significant change we might see is redefining what it means to live a good life and the role of money in achieving that. This is an issue that I tackle in my forthcoming book - The Money Miracle: How small actions can lead to big results - and which I think is at the heart of all our money decisions. You can sign up for pre-publication alerts and a special offer here.
Here's to a long, productive, enjoyable and varied life.
Warm regards
Jason
*Source: The 100 Year Life by Lynda Gratton & Andrew Scott (2016), p24 Bloomsbury