I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.

Here's some great news.

Humans are living longer lives, which means you probably will, too. That is excellent. But it also means we're going to have to save a lot more for retirement. Today, I'm talking to Michael Clinton, best-selling author, longevity expert on the significant impact our longer lives will have on the economy, both good and bad, how that affects what we can reasonably expect to earn from Social Security when we retire. And he's going to help me answer this question, what if I can't afford to live a long life?

Spoiler alert, you can.

Michael and I will tell you how. Now. Michael Clinton. Welcome to Money Rehab.

So great to be with you, Nicole. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure. So I just turned 40. I have 60 years to go.

Absolutely. The 100-year life is here.

So what is the actual life expectancy for folks in the United States?

Well, in the US, it took a little bit of a dip during COVID, but it's now back up into the high '70s. And when you compare that to Japan and Korea and some of the Asian countries, it's '89 there. Women tend to live longer than men, as you probably know. So for a 40-year-old today, you're easily going to get well into your '80s, if not '90s. And Today's five-year-old has a 50 % chance to live to be hungry. That's what the science tells us.

Why? Why is that happening? Why are we living longer?

We've had so much advancement on the medical front in the last 100 years. The world at large has had better nutrition, cleaner water. And now, when you think about today's world, the injection of AI in terms of all of our med tech, and not just the medicine that's going to be coming through, MRNA, but also wearables, ingestibles, things that allow us to monitor our health and be preventative. So a lot of it has to do with the advancements in medicine.

You've been raising so much awareness, I really appreciate it, around longevity and the economy, specifically, and on a personal financial level. We've talked about this in terms of women living longer than men, which is on one hand, amazing, yay us, but on the other hand, that means that we're going to need more money to live those extra years. So can you explain what havoc living longer might cause on the economy or on a microeconomic basis for us personally?

Yeah, no, that's a phenomenal question. What's really interesting You've got these two things happening at the same time. You've got that stress in terms of, how am I going to fund a long life? And then on the other side of the equation, for those who are fortunate, there is going to be the largest transfer of generational wealth wealth in the history of the world over the next 20 years. $90 trillion of assets will be passed down. And the stats that I've read is that by 2040, I believe it is, women will be inheriting a huge amount of those generational transfers through the male spouses. But more importantly, it'll be trickling down into Gen X and millennials and younger generations. So there's going to be this really interesting cushion of this huge transfer of wealth for the fortunate who have the parents and the grandparents who have that wealth. And then on the other side of the equation, you're going to have people living longer who are going to struggle, and you're going to have to work longer and are going to have to be thinking about money in a different way.

You mentioned what this all means for a 40-year-old. Please, I have a vested interest in knowing the answer to that. But I'm assuming you're alludinging to Social Security, Medicare, not being what they used to be, not being there for me, for instance.

Well, the headline which everyone, and we hear this a lot in research from people in their 20s and 30s who say, I know Social Security isn't going to be there when I'm of that age. That's not necessarily true because Social Security is not going to go away because everybody pays into it. So there's a constant flow of income into the Social Security coffers. What you have on the other end is a lot of people have their hands in that copper right now. Just to give you a little quick history lesson, the Social Security was established in 1935. There were 7.8 million people, 65 or older. Today, there are 55 million people, 65 or older, and there will be 80 million people, 65 or older in another 10 years. So that's a lot of hands in that Social Security copper. And then you have a lot of younger people who are contributing to paying for that, which is that fair. So what's going to happen unless Congress and the government can break through its quagmire and have some reform? Some of the things that are being discussed is that Social Security payments may be smaller for next generations.

As you know right now, the longer you wait to take Social Security, the more you get. So if you wait till you're 70 today, you get more than if you're 65 or more than if you're 62 and you're eligible. But I don't think Social Security is going to go away. It just may not be when you're 65, you may not be getting the same level of payment that today's 65 Bureau gets unless Congress steps in and really does some serious reforming of the system.

Yeah, let's mosey down memory lane, I guess, to when Social Security went into effect, when Roosevelt signed it. Folks were living at the time to around 62, right? And so this was intended to support people older than 65.

That's right. And it was the system that we now call retirement, because retirement never existed prior to that, because people worked until they died, right? So retirement is really, I like to say it's an artificial construct brought to you by the federal government, because they set that up as a way to give a bit of a runway for people post-work. But But also the underlying thing was, let's move those people out so we can bring in younger employees. To your point, a lot of people didn't get there. So the government was like, That's not going to cost us a lot of money. What they didn't anticipate is 100 years later, we would be having this huge new longevity that we call it that is having people work a lot longer and therefore want more of the spoils of the Social Security system.

Yeah. I mean, it was never intended to support people for 35 years of their lives.

Absolutely. Also, it was designed to augment, let's call it around 30 % of your income, but But today, many Americans rely on Social Security for 50 % of their income. And that's dangerous, especially if you have inflation. And to your point, over 30 years, inflation, Social Security does have a built-in inflator right now. It But one of the questions is, will it will have an inflator moving forward. So it's a little rocky. So that means today's 40-year-old are probably going to have to take on their financial wellness the way they take on their health wellness, their nutrition, their fitness. We're going to have to have the same approach for our financial wellness.

I mean, Amen. I talk about that every single day. I sure as hell hope so. Let me clarify. When you say inflator, you mean there's an element for inflation adjustment?

Yes. What happens last year, believe it or not, the Social Security, everybody got an 8 % raise in 2023. Wow. So every year, there's a built-in inflator. That's not sustainable. For somebody living a very long life, inflation is a real thing that they have to be thinking about.

There has been a long myth in general about retirement, but don't even get me started, that it's intended to to replace all of your expenses, cover all of your expenses in retirement. That's a myth. I mean, that's for 401(k)s, for Social Security. Social Security, true or false, was never intended to cover all of your expenses. In retirement, right?

That's absolutely correct. And the other thing is that, and you probably know this now, but the models that many financial advisors now use for people is how does your cash look up until your 90s? And I think 90 is the number that oftentimes is being used to say, okay, let's take a look at all your assets, all your cash flow, all your intended cash flow. How does that carry you through to the age of 90? That's where the tension comes in.

So you said that it originally was intended to cover 30 %. People are now using it as 50 %. What should people plan for the percentage covering when they retire in, say, 30 years?

Yeah. No, I still think 30 % is the right number. As you mentioned, you have other supplements. You have the 401(k), you have four savings, you have other liquid investments that you might make with stocks and bonds. Hopefully. Hopefully, yeah. And hopefully, the equities market has continued to be pretty vibrant and consistent.

Yeah. I mean, this is a really important distinction because these vehicles, 401(k) is to the equity markets or the stock markets, as you mentioned, and that's precarious. So depending on the year, God forbid, if you're retiring in a year like 2008, not a great time for your retirement.

Everyone's going to have to work longer, and everyone's going to have to be engaged in the workplace. I think part of the 100-year life, and I'm on the board at the Stanford Center on Longevity, and they have a great piece of research called the New Map of Life. The 60-year career is here, less so for some of us, but certainly for younger people who are going to live even longer. So if you're going to work for 60 years, first of all, hopefully you're going to do something that you love, and you may have two or three different careers. But I think that the message here is people are going to have to work longer to fund a much longer life.

Yeah, but what about all the young people, their fire movement. Work really, really Try hard for five years in your 20s, eat tuna or spam in a can, and then retire when you're fired the time.

I think there's going to be all sorts of crazy models. I think people are going to work really hard for maybe 10, 15 years. Then they're going to take a sabbatical, then they're going to go back and have potentially an entirely new career. It's happening already, especially with the big talent drain of all these boomers exiting the market, the workplace. You've got a huge amount of people leaving the workplace, which is really problematic for talent in terms of companies. So there's going to be a lot of shift and change here.

Yeah. I mean, we also did a whole episode about Social Security, and I think of it, I shouldn't say this, but I think of it like a Ponzi scheme. It's a very It's an illegal Ponzi scheme because the people who are working are then paying the people who are retired. Exactly. That you're not getting the money that you put in, essentially. But another issue with it is that people are not having enough kids or the same amount of kids that we used to. I'll just use myself as an example. I am 40. I have no kids yet. What is that doing to the workforce and to what the retirement system was?

Well, it's only going to compound where we're going because the negative birth rates that are happening in many countries, I think the US is flattish on the birth rate at the moment. You need 2 to 3 % birth rate growth in order to sustain populations. You're probably reading what's happening in China. The population is aging, and there are no babies being born. It's a negative birth rate.

That was a Japan thing for a long time.

Japan, too. Yeah. And there's a real impact. And by the way, even if the birth rate change tomorrow, it's going to take a very long time to catch up. So this is a phenomena that's with us now for decades and decades. Who knows if birth rates will change in the developed countries, in other places like Africa and India and parts of South America, birth rates are still vibrant, but the economies are different. And so this also means that people will have to work longer and resources will shift.

For a second, I was getting depressed, but now it looks like there's a lot of solutions. What else can people do who aren't billionaires? What can the rest of us do for helping to prepare for a longer life?

Yeah, no, I think it's a very valid question. And where I would go with that is is oftentimes when someone is 50-ish, they begin to say, Well, the world has passed me by. Well, I should have done that. Well, I couldn't do this. Well, I'm locked in. The beauty of living a longer life is that you have now a lot more options than previous generations. You can completely reposition, re-imagine yourself at 50 or 55. I was on a call last night with a woman who is 60, and she's graduating from veterinary school. And by the way, she got all her school paid for it for scholarships. Oh, okay. And amazing. And she said, I'll be a veterinary for 20 years or more. It's perfectly fine. So opening up your mind that you can re-imagine yourself. And there are all sorts of ways to get learning and reschooling. You don't have to pay for it out of your own pocket. There are scholarship funds for people over 50. There's a lot of free education on MOOCs and Corsera and Khan Academy, where you can get certificates and learn new things and pivot off into new directions.

I think the key is that people have to realize that the retirement concept is a disrupted, outdated concept. We can't think any longer, while at 65, I'm going to quit working, and I'm not going to work again for the rest of my life, and I'm going to look and see how much money I have. You're going to have to really think about other ways that you're going to earn income. It may not be full-time work, It may be gig work. It might be flex retirement and other forms that are emerging. But think about things that you enjoy doing, and you can hopefully get paid for. So I think that's a good way to frame it.

Or potentially doing retirement abroad where it's a lot cheaper to live.

I like that, too.

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What about, though, the obstacle? We did an episode about this on a show that I co-host called Help Wanted, that's career-focused around ageism. What does ageism look like in the workplace? I'm just thinking about the woman you mentioned who's 60 and going to veterinary school. That's awesome that she could do that, right? And that there are opportunities and online courses and the rest. But what do her classmates say, or what do I mean, her patients would be dogs and cats. So they're not saying anything, but the owners of her patients, I think. Although maybe in medicine, ageism doesn't really play out in the same way as it does in tech and other sectors.

You want to culture your doctor. That's true. It's all relative. And I wrote a book called Roar into the Second Half of Your Life. And we have a business called RoarForward. Com. People can go on it. And we have stories, amazing stories of people we call the reimagineers. We collected over 100 stories of people, 50 plus, who've made huge changes in their life: work, marriage, lifestyle, fitness, inspirational stories. I think ageism starts with one's self because we get a lot of cultural cues about ageism that we absorb into our lives, and that restricts us. And these people were great examples of individuals who are going to break through that self-imposed ageism and also tackle, in many instances, the ageist structure. It's a cultural structure that exists, and it gets compounded for women with sexism. And so how do you navigate that? And a part of that is the threads and the sprouts on the ageism front is that we're having a crisis in America, and we don't have enough people in the health care professions, for example. So nursing school, you can go back to school and become a nurse in your 60s. If if you want to.

There's a lot of openings for people in a lot of different professions where they can pivot into a different profession that is not as ageist. To your point, ageism exists early in tech, in advertising, somewhat in entertainment, although that's changing. And then as you go into other professions, like being a professor or being a doctor, there's less ageism in those sectors because you can work in those fields until you're in your '80s or '90s or whatever. So I think it depends on what field you're in, but also identifying fields that have broken through a little bit on the age of his father.

Yeah, that makes sense. There's a study by ProPublica and the Urban Institute that showed more than half of workers, 50 years or older, are pushed out of long-time jobs before they choose to leave. Why do you think, though, that is? And again, I get that it's sector-specific. An 80-year-old might not get it promoted at a corporate job, but we can elect the President as one.

Oh, that? Yeah. It's really interesting, right? That ProPublic study that you mentioned, that was in the business sector. So yes, the business world, they love to eat their own. They love to grow them, promote them, pay them more. And then when they get to be about 60, they go, You're a little expensive, and we're going to push you out now, and here's the ramp. And I think that's been a structural issue within American business, which I think is going to be blown up. And I wrote a piece about this in Esquire about the seismic impact that is going to happen to the American work. I love to cite L'Oréal, the beauty company. They have a program called L'Oréal for All Generations. They have 13,000 employees over 50, and they're committed to retraining, retaining, promoting, hiring. And that's breakthrough. That's progressive stuff in the business world that is like saying, let's put ages on the side and let's look at skills and individuals and how do we repop them in different kinds of jobs at different ages. We're doing a story on a woman who's been at L'Oréal for 50 years. She's 71 years old. She's got a big promotion.

And we love that story. So I think companies are going to have to take this on in ways to reshape the model so that if you're in the business world and you get to be 60, you're not going to be faced with the discrimination and ageism, because hopefully a lot more people ahead of you will have walked through working longer and have role models. So working till 70 will not be such a strange thing as it is today.

Or maybe starting then.

Yeah, for sure.

And besides L'Oréal, what can companies, though, do to make sure they're thinking about their policies and not fostering a discriminatory environment?

Well, my best example is in France, where 47 CEOs had signed something called the Charter. And the Charter is a commitment to the 50 plus employee. Air France has signed it, AXA Insurance has signed it. And it is a commitment to reskilling, upskilling, retraining, and finding new roles and new ways for that employee cohort to work.

I mean, that's an innovative model. I mean, as you were talking about Air France, I don't know. There are a lot of biohacking, longevity, medicine, and advancements, but do I want a 90 a year-old pilot. I'm not sure.

No. Well, I don't think it was necessarily for the pilots, per se. What's interesting, in the US, pilots have a required retirement age at 65. And there is some legislation to introduce within that world to change it to '67. I think two years is not dramatic, if you will, because there is a shortage of pilots, by the way, as pilots are retiring. Big accounting firms and a number of big law firms require that their partners retire at '62, and that's just crazy. So now there's this hidden thing called the extension, where people can skirt that issue. But also, if you're a partner in a big accounting firm and you're 62 when you're being pushed out and you still want to work, I say, go start your own company and you can work for another 10, 15 years doing what you did for one of the big accounting firms. So there's this notion of a mandatory retirement age. You have to have some of it for pilots, for example. But the State Department, the State Department has a 65-year-old retirement environment age. I'm like, they're just getting started at 65 because of the amount of wisdom and knowledge and experience.

I mean, don't you want a 68-year-old diplomat going and having negotiations around the world? I want somebody who's seasoned enough to understand the complexities of it all. So there are some that make a lot of sense that have technical abilities. I was talking to a guy who heads up the plumbing of a major building company, and he said, My best plumber is I said, Really? I said, Yeah, he loves to work. His clients love him. He is driven and motivated. I'm like, All right, that's good. That's good.

I wonder if after this election, we'll have some forced retirement or age caps.

We will see, right? We will see.

I've also read the advice. I wanted to get your thoughts, Michael, on what to do, though, to stop age bias before it happens or what people can do pro proactively before bigger, widespread changes happen? Is there anything else you could do for yourself, like not put your college graduation year on your resume, things like that, if you're applying for jobs?

Yeah, it's a big issue. And there are these algorithms that meet out people by age, which is really a bad thing. It's like built-in discrimination. The other thing is only 8% of companies include age in their DEI policy. So the first thing I would do is go to your company and say, Hey, do you include age in your DEI policy? And if not, you should call your company on it because age affects everyone, regardless of your race, your gender, your religion, your politics. Everyone is going to be affected by ageism. And I think start within the company in terms of what are the policies, what are companies doing to help those who are in mid-career in terms of retraining and upskilling, for sure, is another way to do it.

Yeah, I think what would also be cool is if young people went to their HR Department, if they have one, or started advocating for age to be a component in DEI. I mean, ageism also affects younger people, too. I remember feeling when I was too young for jobs or potentially, I didn't meet the qualifications on the other side. So that's good age karma, I suppose.

No, that's a great point.

You're an expert in this field, of course, Michael. How do you feel about getting older?

We like to say living longer as opposed to getting older. So I ended up become the accidental poster child of this phenomena. When I wrote this book, it was really more to get something off my chest. But I love to tell the story that when I turned 60, I went to Antarctica and ran a marathon, finishing seven marathons on seven continents. When I was 65, I went back to school and got a master's degree at Columbia in nonprofit philanthropy to become a lifelong learner. One of the things we have to think about is, first of all, aging is a biological process that we're all going to go through, whether we like it or not. So you can go in kicking and screaming, or you can embrace it and say, I love this idea, and I'm going to be a role model for what it means to be 50, 60, 70, 80. And there are so many people now who are emerging as role models as a longtime magazine publisher. And in our current issue, Apart from Bizzar, we have a six-page spread with Carol Burnet, the comedian who's 90 in a fashion shoot, in an interview.

She has a new role on television coming up. I think it's called Paul Morial, the show. And we want people to say, Oh, this is what you can look like at 90. She looks good. She sounds great. She's got a new job in this new series. Like, wow. So I think we need... Until we have new role models that show you that you go run a marathon in Antarctica at 60, you can continue to get a role as an actress at 90, you can do this at 80, you can do this at 70. That's going to change perceptions and create more of a comfort zone about the idea of living longer and more aging. I love that. I want to be one of those people. Yeah.

I mean, I want to be Gloria Vanderbilt who was like, Yeah, I'm going to meet the next level of my life.

Exactly. Yeah. She was 90.

Exactly. In an interview.

Jane Fonda, too.

Jane Fonda.

Bow down, queen.

On the way, Lenny Kravis is going to be 60. Look at him, he's ripped. It's like, Really? That's what 60 looks like. So role models are what we need.

I agree. We end all of our episodes, Michael, by asking our guests for a tip, listeners can take straight to the bank. I'd love to end with one final tip for anyone thinking about planning for a long life, living longer, not getting older, pivoting into a second career, anything.

I would say, treat your financial wellness the way you treat your health. Treat your financial wellness in your balance sheet and your net income and all of your assets the same way you look at your health metrics in terms of your blood pressure and your heart rate. I mean, that's integrated into everyday lives. Integrate that practice into your world, and you will be able to live a long, healthy, and financially secure life.

Cheers to that. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your moneyquestions, moneyrehab@moneynewsnetwork. Com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram @moneynews and TikTok @moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.