You’ve seen the headlines… and they’re not pretty.
Here’s just one recent example from Forbes:
Generation X On The Brink: The Stark Reality Of Their Grim Retirement Outlook
The article reveals that the typical Generation X household has only $40,000 saved for retirement. We’re talking about people in midlife, currently at ages 45 to 60.
Now, the average retirement account balance is $130,000, which is nowhere near enough to retire on. But it’s actually even worse than that, because the average is skewed by the richest people – the 1% who have significantly more assets.
So let’s look at the median amount of retirement savings for Gen X:
It’s only $10,000.
That means half of all people born between 1965 and 1980 have less than $10,000 saved for when they stop working. And the majority of those who have more than the median don’t have nearly enough, especially those in their late 50s.
While older Baby Boomers are said to be sitting on a pile of cash, many younger Boomers (dubbed Generation Jones, born in the first half of the 1960s) are in much the same boat as Generation X.
You’d think people our age are scared to death that they won’t be able to retire on time.
But that’s far from our top concern.
The Retirement Myth
Speaking as a Gen Xer myself, we’ve grown up with the idea that at some point in your mid-60s, you stop working and begin your “golden years.” Retirement was the well-deserved reward for working hard, raising a family, and being a productive citizen.
It was just how things worked, right? And now it feels like retirement is just one more thing we’re getting the shaft on.
Truth is, retirement has been around for less than 100 years. And even once the concept was introduced, it was viewed as a strange and unattractive idea by many Americans.
When Social Security was introduced in 1935, the whole idea of “retirement” was essentially new. It was a bold move to protect older people, many of whom did backbreaking manual labor and needed a way to stop working while still paying the bills.
It wasn’t completely an act of goodwill though.
The U.S. government knew from the actuarial tables that most workers wouldn’t even make it to age 62, and therefore would never collect benefits at 65. Plus, there was the added motivation of moving older workers out of the labor market to make room for the young.
Fast-forward twenty years, and white-collar workers of the 1950s still hadn’t taken to the idea of retirement, despite the fact that they were flush with cash from generous corporate pensions. At the time, people defined themselves by what they produced and contributed, a very different mindset from our current hyper-consumer culture.
In the late 1950s, marketers – including the founders of the new American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and Del Webb, who started the very first retirement community in Arizona – started to rebrand “retirement” as the golden years.
And that’s how our current conception of what you’re supposed to do in your mid-60s happened.
Fast-forward another 20 years to the creation of the 401(k) in 1978, which caused corporate pensions to largely disappear. We had to manage our own retirement savings, which made our investments vulnerable to multiple financial crises and other life circumstances.
So basically our modern idea of retirement was created by marketers based on a temporary set of circumstances that hasn’t existed in over four decades.
And now, Generation X may be the first group that can’t afford to retire en masse in our 60s, even though we’ve been trained to feel that’s what we’re entitled to do.
Is It Really a Retirement Crisis?
The headlines are calling it the “retirement crisis,” simply because a relatively new idea about stopping work at an arbitrary age is already unraveling.
And it can certainly feel that way if you don’t understand why this manufactured social construct exists in the first place.
Is it really a crisis, though, given that the entire concept of retirement had to be sold to who we now call “knowledge workers” in the first place? Plus, the expected time frame to stop working simply doesn’t make sense now that we’re living much longer and healthier lives than people did in the 1950s.
When you talk about retirement with many people in our age group, they don’t see not retiring “on time” as a crisis necessarily. We’re facing the changing nature of “the way it used to be” like we have since we became the first latchkey kids – with an independent spirit and our famous resiliency and self-sufficiency.
So, maybe Gen Xers are instead worried about the major drop in standard of living that most retirees experience. And while there’s more awareness that the “golden years” aren’t really that golden if you’re living on the minimum required for retirement that financial planners define, that’s not what’s keeping people in their 50s and early 60s up at night.
If there’s a true retirement crisis, it’s the crippling depression and lack of purpose and meaning that retirees often experience. People over the age of 65 make up a disproportionate number of all suicides, with men in this age group at the highest risk of all demographics to take their own lives.
And it’s not just taking your own life. Lack of purpose can simply negate the drive to keep going:
People who didn’t have a strong life purpose — which was defined as “a self-organizing life aim that stimulates goals” — were more likely to die than those who did, and specifically more likely to die of cardiovascular diseases.
Could this be the thing about retirement that’s the number one issue for our generation? It’s up there, certainly, which is why the Gen X resolve to simply keep working longer isn’t completely surprising. No one likes to feel worthless.
But it’s still not the primary concern. Oddly enough, what’s worrying us the most is a natural consequence of otherwise positive developments.
The New Longevity
Let’s go back to those actuarial tables in 1935 when Social Security was passed. Life expectancy was less than 61 years at the time, which meant only a limited amount of people collected benefits, and for only a limited amount of time.
In 2024, average life expectancy is over 79 years – and that doesn’t even tell the full story. That’s because the United States has a serious health divide. It’s a prime example of an average number not telling the whole story.
On one end we have people suffering from obesity, diabetes, and chronic heart disease, not to mention gun violence, opioid overdoses, and suicide.
At the other end of the spectrum we have half the country living much longer, healthier lives. These people can expect to live into their late 80s and mid 90s, or higher.
More Americans are reaching the age of 100 these days than ever before. That’s why the same financial planner who tells you it’s not too late to “catch up” on your retirement savings in your 50s will then proceed to say that you need enough money to live without working for 30 years.
30 years! All that means is if you retire at 67 then you should plan to live to 97. Maybe you will or maybe you won’t, but it’s hard to imagine betting against yourself, right?
And this doesn’t even take into account the billions of dollars invested in developing medical treatments that slow and even reverse the aging process. It sounds like science fiction, but credible advances are being made at an incredible rate.
So no, the greatest fear about retirement is not about quitting work “on time.” Many Gen Xers proudly claim that they’ll work ‘til they drop (although I’m certainly not advocating for that).
The greatest fear people in their 50s and early 60s cite in Transamerica’s Retirement Survey is “outliving my savings and investments.” And this is a very real concern.
In fact, a 2024 survey from Allianz Life Insurance found that 63% of Americans worry more about running out of money than death. Given the dire consequences of poverty later in life, that’s understandable.
Financial planners know that the primary risk for retirees is longevity. This is due to the twin pressures of people living longer and healthier lives, and the certainty of periodic financial crises and downturns that will significantly impact retirement savings and income.
The Danger of “Just Enough”
This creates an interesting dilemma for those who think they don’t have a “retirement problem.”
Those with very little retirement savings know they must work longer to avoid running out of money in their later years. And the richest 1% are likely fine by putting their money to work to make more money.
It’s the folks who have “just enough” to retire on by conventional standards that have the most to worry about. And that’s going to make for an unpleasant retirement experience.
Forget for a second the drop in lifestyle and standard of living. Never mind the loss of purpose and aimlessness that retirement often brings.
These are the people who are most likely to run out of money by living too long. And along the way, they’ll spend their “golden years” worrying about running out of money the entire time.
Not fun. Here’s a scary little thought experiment I like to run by people.
In 2023 scientists demonstrated that age reversal at the cellular level is possible, and there will soon be human trials to develop treatments that will literally rewind the clock for older people.
This is actually true.
But these things take awhile. So say it’s a hypothetical 20 years later from now. You’re retired, managing but watching every penny, worried about another financial crisis like the ones in 2027 and 2035. You’ve been out of the job market for 10 years, having retired with “just enough” at age 67.
In the future you’re now in, age reversal treatments not only work, they’re now affordable for most people. The question is, will you undergo the procedure?
Seems silly, but it would be a real dilemma. You’ve been out of the job market for a decade, even while technological, business, and social change has accelerated. You’d be younger and more viable after the treatment, but you’d have to find a way to support yourself.
While this scenario is more probable than you may think, forget about it. Because you could end up in the exact same situation without the benefit of restored youth at 77.
That’s because you could easily live to 97 or more from that point as you should already be planning for. So, what to do?
It’s Time for “Unretirement Planning”
One of the more important keys to a successful retirement for people our age is being able to earn at least what you’re making now right up until you’re ready to retire.
The data shows that once you’re over 50, though, odds are the decision to leave your job won’t be yours. Although age discrimination is illegal, companies use layoffs and coerced “early retirement” to shed themselves of older employees.
And given the prospect of longer lives and health spans, we’re not really in a position to retire at 65 and coast for 30 years anyway. So the smart move is to start the next phase of your life intentionally, and that begins with a smarter plan.
In other words, instead of planning to retire, we advocate for “unretirement planning.” To design your ideal life beginning now – one that allows you to live anywhere you want thanks to a powerful small business that gives you the option to work as long as you want or need while enjoying life as a traveler or expat.
My mission with Further is to help people adapt to the new realities of retirement, longer healthier lives, and the dramatically changing economic environment. And a key ingredient of this new paradigm is exploring opportunities in various places around the world where the quality of your life grows in leaps and bounds.
Over the last 25 years, I’ve started a dozen companies. And then starting in 2006, I made a decision to only create businesses that were location-independent, which means I could run them from anywhere and never be constrained by geography.
It’s worked out well. I was able to grow a software company to 8 figures in profitable revenue, with 65 employees who worked from wherever in the world they were, just like I did.
Now in 2025, being location-independent looks like a very smart decision. As my wife and I prepare to leave the United States for good this time, we’re in a position to do something that has become the new American dream for many — to leave.
Retiring overseas has already become a popular, and often necessary, solution for older Americans. I’m advocating for those approaching retirement age to do the same, but with a small portable business that provides worry-free income to live your best life abroad.
But let’s be clear: We’re not running away from the United States. We’re running to beautiful and culturally-rich locations with lower costs of living, more affordable and often superior healthcare, virtually non-existent gun violence, and a notable lack of insane political division.
And that’s just the beginning. Because the rest of the world is brimming with business and investment opportunities, ranging from up-and-coming real estate markets to untapped avenues for products and services that are saturated in the States.
But it all begins with a way to make money from anywhere, usually by providing expert services remotely to the American market while enjoying a lower-cost locale. From here I’ll be writing a series of articles for you outlining how to get started with your own unretirement planning. Stay tuned.
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