The nation’s average retirement age is rising from 65 to 80, according to Wells Fargo & Co.
The San Francisco bank said Wednesday the idea of a retirement age of 65 “is going the way of the typewriter, another 20th-century relic,” according to Joe Ready, director of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust, of Well Fargo.
The Well’s survey found that 25% of middle class Americans think they’ll have to keep working until age 80 to be able to retire. And 75% think they’ll still have to work after they have retired.
“The fact that the vast majority of middle class Americans expect to work well past the traditional retirement age has significant societal and economic implications,” said Ready.
What It Means
If a majority of a nation’s citizens have no financial security as they get older, it changes the nature of the workplace and of the entire society. It also means that all the discussions about “wealth management” and long-term invetsing need to be re-vamped because the net investment results do not produce retirement financial security.
This is more bad news for the financial services industry, which seeks to avoid these painful discussions about their role and compensation in developing long-term financial plans.
The best role model for this new financial reality is Andy Rooney, the talented CBS reporter and commentator, who retired from CBS about a month before he died at age 92 on Nov. 5, 2011. Rooney had announced on Oct. 2, 2011 on “60 Minutes” that he would no longer appear regularly.
“Pulling a Rooney” should enter into the common American language use as someone who retires within a month of dying.
