Wednesday, December 15, 2010

"Longevity" Planning

Are we moving out of the age of retirement planning and into the age of "longevity planning"? That's the conclusion reached by two researchers who worked on a retirement study for The Hartford insurance company. They think that rather than looking for ways to manage their retirement, in the future people will increasingly seek out ways to make use of their additional longevity, after they've finished working. They point to the example of a 529 plan, which is usually funded for a child's college education - but can also be used to pay for a retiree to go back to college, and possibly pursue another career.

"The yacht is not the goal of retirement anymore," said one of the experts, John Diehl of the Hartford. "Advisors need to be talking about the issues of living longer."

A big part of that is that people are taking more of an active role in planning the latter stages of their lives. In the Hartford survey, 75. 2 percent of the respondents said they felt the need to rely upon themselves for resources in their retirement, up from 71.2 percent in 2006. That's a crucial first step toward keeping control of your life, even after your working days may be over.

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