Jay Jackson
Chairman & CEO
TIAA and the Gerontological Society of America recently released a report that should be required reading for anyone who plans to get old—which, if things go well, is all of us. It’s called “Health and Wealth in the Era of Longevity,” and while the title sounds academic, the implications are deeply personal.
The report maps out what it actually takes to navigate older adulthood successfully. Not just to survive those extra years we’re all gaining, but to thrive in them. And the hard truth is that the decisions that
will shape your 80s and 90s need to be made in your 30s and 40s.
Here’s a statistic that should change how you think about retirement: if you’re 65 today, you’re not planning for 10-15 years of retirement. You’re planning for potentially 20-30 years. Women who reach 65 can expect to live to about 87. Men, to about 84. And those are just the averages—half the population will live longer than that.
Think about that for a moment. If you retire at 65, you might spend as many years in retirement as you spent in your entire career from ages 40 to 65. That’s not a brief epilogue to your working life. That’s a whole second act.
The report puts it bluntly: what people used to buy life insurance for—protecting their families if they died too soon—has been replaced by a bigger concern. “Living insurance.” Having enough wealth and guaranteed income to cover living and health care expenses during extended lifespans.
Most people aren’t doing this math. They’re operating on assumptions about life expectancy that were accurate for their grandparents but are dangerously outdated for themselves.
The Gap Between Health Span and Life Span
The report asks a fair question: are these added years of life healthy ones? After all, living to 95 sounds great until you realize the last 15 years might be spent managing chronic diseases, losing independence, or struggling with cognitive decline.
There’s a concept called “compression of morbidity”—the idea that modern medicine would successfully squeeze illness into a brief period at the end of life, so most people could live healthy, independent lives until shortly before death. For a while, it looked like that was happening.
But the evidence is mixed. The “health span”—the period of life spent in good health, free from chronic diseases and disabilities—isn’t growing as fast as the life span. Among younger and middle-aged adults today, factors like sedentary lifestyles, poor nutrition, and the opioid epidemic are eroding the health advantages that medical advances created.
This matters because you can’t just plan for more years. You have to plan for the quality of those years.
The Three Literacies You Need
The report introduces a framework that I’ve found incredibly compelling in thinking about how to frame planning for the future:
Financial literacy – Understanding how money works: earning, saving, spending, borrowing, investing. This is the baseline. If you don’t understand compound interest, tax-advantaged accounts, or the difference between stocks and bonds, you’re building on sand.
Longevity literacy – Having a clear, objective understanding of your life expectancy combined with financial literacy. This means looking at your age, your health, your family history, and doing the math on how long your money actually needs to last. Most people dramatically underestimate this number.
Longevity fitness – Having the social, health, and wealth equity needed to thrive—not just survive—during an extended lifetime. This goes beyond money to encompass your health habits, your social connections, your sense of purpose, your support network.
Here’s the key insight: these aren’t just individual responsibilities. They require social and institutional support. You can be the most financially literate person in the world, but if your employer doesn’t offer a retirement plan, if you can’t access affordable health care, if your community lacks infrastructure for aging adults—you’re still facing an uphill battle.
What This Means for Planning Today
The report’s recommendations are practical, but they require starting early and thinking differently:
In your 30s and 40s: This is when you build the foundation. Not just savings—though that matters enormously—but habits. The health behaviors you establish now will compound over decades. The social connections you maintain now will be the support network you rely on later. The financial literacy you develop now will guide decisions for the next 40-50 years.
In your 50s and 60s: This is the critical window. The report shows that people who reach age 40 in the highest income bracket live 15 years longer than those in the lowest bracket. And education matters even more than race in predicting longevity. People with a four-year college degree can expect to live significantly longer than those without one, regardless of race.
This isn’t about shaming people who didn’t go to college. It’s about recognizing that the resources, knowledge, and opportunities that come with education—health literacy, access to preventive care, workplace benefits, stable housing—create a cascading advantage over time.
In your 70s and beyond: The goal is to convert savings into guaranteed income streams. Social Security helps, but it’s not enough for most people. This is where annuities, systematic withdrawal strategies, careful tax planning, and potentially a life settlement become essential. You’re not just managing a portfolio anymore—you’re managing a decades-long income stream that needs to outlast you.
The Infrastructure We’re Missing
Here’s what frustrates me about the current system: we’re asking individuals to solve a structural problem.
The report notes that the U.S. will have a deficit of 121,900 physicians across all specialties by 2030. We’ll need 1.2 million more nurses. And the number of geriatrics specialists—doctors trained specifically in the complex health needs of older adults—is actually declining. In 2022, there were only 7,400 board-certified geriatricians in the entire country. We need 30,000 by 2030.
Nearly all medical schools require a pediatrics rotation. Only 10% require geriatrics training. We have more adults over 65 than children under 18 in eleven states now, yet our health care system is still built for a population pyramid that no longer exists.
The same gap exists in financial services. Most retirement planning tools assume you’ll die around the average life expectancy. They don’t account for the possibility—increasingly likely—that you’ll live well beyond it. They don’t help you think through the trade-offs between working longer, spending less, or accepting more risk. They certainly don’t help you plan for the emotional and social dimensions of a 30-year retirement.
Why a Holistic Approach is Needed for Retirement Planning
This is why the work we do at Abacus focuses so much on longevity planning. Not just “how much do you need to retire?” but “how do you design a life that works financially, physically, socially, and emotionally across decades?”
That means:
- Starting the conversation earlier. If you’re 40, you’re not too young to think about longevity planning. You’re actually at the perfect age to start building the habits and resources that will serve you at 80.
- Being realistic about timelines. If you might live to 95, your money needs to last to 100. That extra margin matters enormously.
- Thinking beyond just money. What’s your health plan for the next 30 years? Who’s in your support network? What gives you purpose? How will you stay engaged? These aren’t soft questions—they’re essential ones.
- Building in flexibility. The future is uncertain. Markets fluctuate. Health changes. Life happens. The goal isn’t a rigid plan that breaks at the first unexpected event. It’s a flexible framework that adapts.
The Question That Drives Everything
The question isn’t whether we’re living longer—we are. The question is whether we’re prepared for what that means. Whether we’re building the individual capabilities and social infrastructure to make those added years not just longer, but better.
At 40, that question might seem abstract. At 60, it feels urgent. At 80, you’re living with the consequences of the decisions you made decades earlier.
The best time to start planning for 100 was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.
