Page 40 - Money - November 2018

THE
THE
ULTIMATETIMATE
UL
RE
RETIREMENTTIREMENT
GUIDE
GUIDE
201
20188
SOLO FUTURE OF
THE chance one member will live to be 92,
SENIORSTIREMENT
RE
according to the Society of Actuaries.
You can chalk up much of this longevity to
the fact that fewer Americans are smoking
and dying of tobacco-related diseases. In
fact, the cancer death rate has plunged at
least 26% from its peak in 1991, according to
the American Cancer Society. Medical
breakthroughs that extend people’s lives are
happening all the time, and it’s hard to say
which cure is on the brink of discovery.
Orville Rogers is 100 years old and That means more and more people will be
living the Orville Rogers life in the not-so-
routinely breaks records at track meets distant future. It also means a hefty retire-
around the country. Sure, the World ment plan is in order. Think about it: Retire
War II veteran doesn’t have much at 60, and you could be living the dream for
40 years. Retire at 80, and you still have two
competition in his age bracket, but that’s decades to hone your own marathon skills.
beside the point. Meanwhile, the average savings of
workers ages 60 to 64 with a 401(k) is
The point is that Rogers is in his $195,200, according to Fidelity. Is that
fourth decade of retirement and still enough to take most retirees across the
running in all the ways you want to be finish line? Hardly. And experts are losing
sleep over the looming shortfall. “We’re
when you hit triple digits: a model of basically in worse shape than we’ve ever

physical, emotional, and financial health. been,” says Tony James, executive vice
chairman of private equity firm Blackstone
Rogers trained pilots in World War II, and coauthor of Rescuing Retirement.
then went on to a successful career as Rogers retired just before his 60th
birthday in November 1977. He didn’t want to
a commercial pilot. His experience can stop working then, but the airlines had set
help train us all for the future. Today’s the mandatory retirement age at 60. As a
retirement is a marathon, not a sprint, pilot, he always knew his career wasn’t fully
under his control. He was subject to regular
and Rogers is crushing it. flight tests and medical checkups, and failing
any one of them could have put an even
“Some people think I run because I can, earlier end to his career. “I realized I was
but that’s backward,” says Rogers from his responsible for my own retirement,” he says.
home in Dallas. “I can because I do.” Rogers began socking away savings in a
If America could just bottle Rogers’s Merrill Lynch account in his mid-thirties,
can-do spirit—and his undoubtedly terrific decades before the creation of the 401(k).
genes—the country might fare a bit better in Financial advisors used to employ 30
the decades to come. The world’s centenar- years as their conservative benchmark for
ian population is expected to grow eightfold retirement planning purposes. They’d tell
by 2050, according to a Pew Research Center you to make sure your money would last
report of United Nations estimates, with until age 95, assuming retirement at the
America leading the pack in the sheer traditional age of 65. Now firms have started
number of citizens age 100 and up. For a stretching their timelines.
couple who are both 65 today, there’s a 50% “We’re definitely suggesting that people

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