The New Old Age
By: Mathew Greenwald
Apr 2, 2026
Old age isn’t what it used to be. Increasingly, it is longer, lived in worse health, and requires more complicated decisions. One of the key reasons for this is that modern medicine has gotten more effective at keeping sick people alive longer and healthy people alive long enough to get sick. In the past 50 years, the time older Americans spend managing long-term illnesses has doubled. The number of people who reach age 100 is projected to grow eightfold over the next four decades: many people currently in their 60s will reach age 100 and therefore have to fund it.
A New Landscape of Living Arrangements
The housing sector has responded to this demographic shift with a rapidly expanding set of options. Assisted living, congregate care, continuing care retirement communities, and nursing homes now sit alongside an increasingly sophisticated ecosystem of in-home support services and technologies. Older adults who lose mobility or cognitive function no longer must leave their homes. Stair lifts, home elevators, voice-activated controls, home monitoring systems, and even companion robots make aging at home viable for many. However, some of these technologies are expensive and it seems certain that more effective and expensive technologies are on the way. How will workers approaching retirement think through how to prepare financially for the possibility of needing these facilities or technologies a quarter decade or more after retirement? This growing range of choices is both a blessing and a challenge. Not only will older people often have to make very complicated decisions about where and how they want to live the last years of their lives, but people in their 50s and 60s now have to make decisions about how much money they want to save to be able to afford some of these possibilities. The complexity of this retirement planning issue is unprecedented.
The Rising Cost of Living Longer
A long period of ill health late in life can be extremely costly. Consider inflation: if it averages just 2.5% annually over a 30-year retirement (a conservative assumption), the value of a dollar will be reduced by more than half. For example, if the cost of the average private room in a nursing rises at the rate that it has for the last 10 years, the cost will be $427,872 per year in 2076 when today’s 50-year-old turns 90.
Many financial professionals are not keeping pace with the increasing likelihood of a very long life. Our research shows that more than half of advisors who incorporate longevity planning into their overall planning assume a lifespan of age 93 or younger. In contrast, the Society of Actuaries Longevity projector estimates a 44% chance that one member of a healthy 65-year-old couple will live to age 95 and a 16% chance that one will live to 100. A very strong majority do not want to take a 44% chance of outliving their financial resources.
The Challenge of Uncertainty
One of the most difficult aspects of retirement planning is the enormous variation in late-life outcomes. Some people will not reach 95, or if they do, will spend little money at that age. But others may live well past 95 and face 10 years or more of unavoidable and very high expenses. The range between these outcomes is vast and we need new approaches to help people navigate retirement planning decisions.
What Financial Professionals Must Do
The “new old age” requires new skills and models for financial professionals. Here are three thoughts:
- There is a need to re-think longevity planning ages and how to present them.
- Financial professionals should educate their clients on the variety of housing choices open to those with impaired physical or cognitive capabilities and their costs. This information will enable them to make better decisions about how to prepare for the risk of needing long-term care.
- Financial professionals should develop new approaches to help people think about their preferences for their lives throughout retirement. Preferences will certainly change as people age. But financial decisions made at age 65 will certainly impact financial capability at age 90.
Long life is a great gift that an increasing proportion of us will receive. To gain the full advantage of this gift, we need to better learn how to prepare for it financially.
