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Imagine a Future Where Retirement Comes at Age 130

Imagine a Future Where Retirement Comes at Age 130

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Imagine a Future Where Retirement Comes at Age 130

Longer lifespans will encourage start up businesses, career changes, and an education boom. 

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When healthspans radically extend, people will have more time and energy to do many things, including work. But who wants to stay on the same career path for all those extra years?  Probably not many – meaning that the adult education market can look forward to an upswing in business and individuals can expect opportunities for greater career variety.

First, let’s think a little about time.  Right now, with an average life expectancy of 80 years, someone who starts work at age 20 and retires at age 65 works for 45 years.  In a future with a life expectancy of 150 years, a person who starts work at 20 might not retire until age 130, giving them 110 years to work.  That’s an extra 65 years to potentially have multiple rewarding careers.  And, of course, there are also additional non-work hours that will accumulate with longer, healthier, lives.  The current 80 year life expectancy only allows for 4160 weekends and 29,200 evenings, but if one were to live to 150, available weekends and evenings would be 7800 and 54,750 respectively.

It’s exciting to have more time to do things, since so many of us are constantly time-crunched.  Re-training for a new career is an adventure that will become more common, and it turns out that a huge chunk of people already want to do it even if they haven’t yet started down that path.  According to a University of Phoenix survey, “nearly half of working adults (45 percent) are still searching for the right career.”

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Growing demand for education shows up in market data.  According to a report by London-based investment bank IBIS Capital, the global education market is now worth $4.4 trillion and is set to expand over the next five years.  Much of that growth is being fueled by e-learning as well as by adult learners looking to pivot onto a different career path.  There are numerous success stories of people who have completely re-defined their work lives.

When banker Christopher George was laid off, he re-invented himself and became a beer maker. Teresa Scott left magazine publishing to start a women’s boxing company.  Melanie Camp left a job at defense contractor Lockheed Martin to become an innkeeper at a bed and breakfast.  Cathy Churcher quit her nursing school admissions job and opened a chocolate store. 

The stories are seemingly endless, and in hindsight the switches seem fairly easy, but they are not.  Each change requires planning, re-training, and strategic thinking.  As Time.com points out about Churcher’s path:

“Three years before launching, she began writing a business plan. She studied local candy stores, trying to learn from their successes and failures. She earned a certificate as a professional chocolatier. And two years before she opened her shop, she started selling at farmers’ markets and to local stores and restaurants.”

Patience and wisdom are two traits that grow as one gets older.  Having more of these characteristics, combined with health, will make it easier for people to re-invent themselves over and over if they choose.  And if they need help aside from regular educational institutions, there are new businesses popping up to serve this market.  For instance, PivotPlanet is a website that offers to help coach people through their career change, connecting users to experts in person, via phone, or video conferencing.  The company says that it aims to be “the resource for finding real-life career and start-up business advice shared by experienced advisors who can answer your questions and offer insights into their profession.”

There are also many online platforms that allow for upgrading of skills without racking up too much debt.  Today, these include: Lynda, Coursera and Udemy.  In the future, there will be virtual reality offerings that make online learning feel more like meet-space education.  One can imagine a day where an executive comes home from work, has dinner, and then spends an hour in her virtual learning environment instead of watching TV.

Our work lives are set to extend, which means that career-churn will increase as well.  This might seem daunting to some, but in the end it is an opportunity for individuals to try on many hats and find the career that suits them best.