What if your money disappears before you do?
It is wonderful that modern medicine not only saves many young lives that even 50 years ago would have been lost, but it is extending our life expectancy out into the nineties. Many of us can expect to see not our grandchildren grow, but our great-grandchildren too (unless the continued postponement of birth into the late thirties continues of course). For years financial planners assumed that most people would only live twenty years past retirement at age 65, but that is no longer true, and this assumption is now out by a good ten, if not 15 or 20 years (for people who are currently in their forties). This radical change in our reality needs a complete rethink when it comes to investing for retirement and how we plan for an income in retirement.
Let’s look at some of the implications of living longer:
- Governments and companies are already pushing out the pensionable age to take the burden off the State. If you’ve been winding down in anticipation of retirement, suddenly having to push that out another couple of years is not fun.
- The income purchasing power for your retirement funds has to be maintained through the whole of life after retirement. This isn’t a simple matter of keeping up with inflation, because some key expenses that are vital as you get older, like health care, have been increasing faster than inflation for the last two decades, so it is reasonable to assume it will continue to do so. The cost of energy is also increasing above inflation.
- Past age 80, one often needs additional care and that can double the monthly income requirement. There is more than one way to plan for this but it is going to expensive and needs to be considered.
- The older you get, the greater the chance that you will get a severe illness that will require expenses over and above medical aid, who lamentably decrease in benefits every year. This requires additional capital/income or payments toward a risk premium to cover those expenses, and the foresight to get into those products while we are still healthy.
- Your capital in your retirement fund may have to last double the time that was assumed when you started your planning, and if you’re closing into retirement accumulating more may just not be possible. If you work for a company that has a pensionable age, you could be forced out whether you like it or not. Starting a new career as a ‘pensioner’ is difficult.
- If you get close to retirement and it becomes clear that your pension pot is just not big enough you have a few options:- You can keep on working longer, put away more of your current income, take less at retirement and use smart asset allocation to ensure your capital is going to yield an income for the whole of your life.