Ready For Retirement
Ready For Retirement
10 Ways Retirement Has Completely Changed in 30 Years
Forget the gold watch and glide path to the couch. Retirement has been rewritten. In this episode, James walks through the 10 biggest shifts redefining life after work—and how to replace outdated rules with a plan that’s practical, human, and built for how people actually live today.
From the mindset shift away from Depression-era scarcity to using money as a tool for a richer life, this episode explores how to align spending with values so every dollar supports health, connection, and meaning.
Longevity changes everything. With many people now facing 25 to 30 years in retirement, healthspan and financial strategy both need an update. Learn how longer lives, inflation, and lower bond yields are forcing a smarter approach: reliable income for essentials, growth for purchasing power, and cash buffers to ride out volatility.
We break down the fall of pensions and the rise of 401(k)s and IRAs—plus sequence-of-returns risk, Social Security timing, and tax-efficient withdrawals that can extend your savings by a decade or more.
Retirement isn’t a cliff anymore; it’s a ramp. Hear how phased work, consulting, and passion projects keep identity and income alive. We’ll also share ways to plan for rising healthcare costs, use technology for travel and lifelong learning, and design daily habits that add both years and meaning.
What you’ll learn:
- Retirement mindset: how to shift from scarcity to purpose and use money as a tool for fulfillment.
- Portfolio strategy: balancing income, growth, and liquidity for longevity and inflation.
- Tax planning: how to manage withdrawals, Social Security, and RMDs for lifetime efficiency.
- Health and lifestyle design: funding healthcare, travel, and connection intentionally.
- Purpose and meaning: creating a next chapter that feels alive and aligned.
If you want to build a retirement that reflects your values, not old-school financial rules, this conversation gives you the clarity to live it well.
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Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.
The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.
Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements
Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.
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When you think about retirement, do you think about what your parents or even your grandparents experienced? Well, the reality is retirement today looks nothing like it did 30 years ago. And in today's video, I'm going to share with you the 10 biggest shifts that have happened over the last 30 years so that as you prepare your retirement, you can prepare for the specifics today, not what things looked like 30 years ago. The first thing, though, that's different about retirement today than it was 30 years ago is a psychological shift that's happened in today's retirees. So think back to 30 years ago. The people who were retiring at that time were people who were raised during the Great Depression era. If you were raised during the Great Depression era, there was not a lot to go around. So that created this sense of scarcity. That created this sense of I need to save everything I have. I don't know where my next meal is going to come from. I don't know where my next dollar is going to come from. And that was ingrained into everything that person started doing. Now, that served those people really well. That was required to survive and to live during that time. But what it led to is those same retirees not being able to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor. By the time they actually retired and they were no longer living in scarcity, there was still that mindset of scarcity. And it prevented them from fully being able to use, fully being able to spend much of the resources that they had accumulated. Fast forward to today, what's different? Today there's this opportunity, there's this mindset shift that says, how do we actually use our money as a tool to help us get the most out of our retirement? But you have to be careful because your parents were the ones who are retiring and they're the ones that grew up in the Great Depression era. Much of that mindset probably was transferred down to you in many ways. I see this all the time. And I want to acknowledge this that mindset, there's something that's very respectable about that. There's this frugality, there's this thrift, there's this thing that we look up to, and in many ways, we say that's a wonderful thing to be able to do, to be able to live within your means and to be able to have that very disciplined mindset towards your money and all other aspects of life. But if that's no longer serving you, if that's no longer the thing that's allowing you to enjoy your wealth, then might be time to rethink that and say, how can we shift our mindset and come back to today and say, how do we shift that so that we can start to enjoy the fruits of our labor? How can we spend? How can we use what we've saved in order to get the most out of life with our money? The second thing that has shifted in the last 30 years is life expectancy. If you go back 30 plus years ago, life expectancy in the US was about mid-70s, somewhere around age 75. Today, that life expectancy is closer to 79. Now, that might not seem like a big shift, but if you're gonna retire at 65, that difference in life expectancies means your retirement is going to be 40% longer on average. Now, I know that this statistic is a little bit misleading because there's a difference between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy for those of you who have already reached age 60 or age 65, in which case it's gonna be closer to your mid 80s, is now your life expectancy. But it's that general shift or that relative difference of people are living longer today. And that's a trend that's continuing. So, two things with that. One, how do we prioritize our health to make sure that we're not just living longer, but living healthy longer? And number two, how do we plan to say our portfolio, our income sources in retirement need to last a longer period of time? More life, of course, is great, but what are we gonna do to be able to support that in terms of creating the income we need to create? The third difference between retiring now and retiring 30 years ago is the impact of pensions. 30 years ago, 40 to 45% of all workers were covered by some type of a pension. If you worked for a large corporation, that number was closer to 65% of all workers were covered by a pension. Today, that number is closer to 10 to 15%. What that means is that in the past, much of the burden of your retirement needs was covered by your employer. They manage the pension, they manage your ability to have that income stream when you retired. That is completely shifted. Instead of defined benefit plans, you now have defined contribution plans. Those are your 401ks, those are your 403Bs, those are the things that you contribute to, and you are responsible for creating that or growing that to a point that it can create income for you throughout your retirement. So there's good news and bad news with that. The bad news is it's not being done for you. The burden of your retirement needs has been shifted to you. The good news is if you plan well, if you use your 401k correctly, if you use your savings correctly, you can actually create a better lifestyle with that than you could have using a pension. So more of a need to be in tune with your retirement plan because less of it's being provided for you, but also more of an opportunity. The fourth difference between retirement today and retirement 30 years ago is the attitude towards aging. In the 1990s, retirement was kind of seen as the beginning of decline. Aging was very much a decline. Your health started to erode. You did not have the best years of your life in front of you when you retired. Today, with advances in health, with an overall better awareness of how the things that we eat, the things that we do with our body, the advances there, people retire and still have plenty of good, vibrant years in front of them, assuming they do the right things to prioritize their health. So that's been a complete shift, even in mindset towards as you retire, what can that look like? Because that looks very different if you start to view that as the beginning of the end versus viewing that as the beginning of a new chapter. Something with tons of vibrance, tons of energy, tons of ability to do the wonderful things you want to do, because this mindset is leading towards people taking care of themselves differently and enjoying their retirement in different ways. The fifth change has to do with healthcare costs. 30 plus years ago, lower costs and overall lower gaps in coverage. Today, healthcare costs could be one of the largest costs that you have in your retirement years. So, what does that mean? Well, directly what that means is the need to plan for your healthcare costs, the need to plan for that is becoming increasingly more important. The indirect impact of that is what I just said. How do we prioritize our health as much as possible? How do we do the types of things with our lives that prevent, to the greatest extent possible, our dependence upon this type of healthcare? Some say you'll never need it. We'll all need it at some point. But can we do things today that limit our dependence upon this healthcare system that can be very expensive? And it's not necessarily improving our health as much as being the band-aid fix to some of these things that currently ail us. How do we start to reprioritize the way we take care of ourselves going into retirement so we can enjoy retirement more and have less of a potential financial impact on our retirement when a health event comes up? The sixth thing that's changed is what retirement even means. 30 years ago, you worked till 62 or 65 and you were done. Today, it's very normal for people to still work to those same ages, but it's not a black and white transition. Maybe you work part-time, maybe you do some consulting, maybe you pick up a side project that becomes a source of income. It's not as binary. You don't work for the same corporation for 40 years like you're used to and then just retire. There's plenty of things that you do along the way. It's more of a phased-in retirement. There's more options for what you can do for work. And in many cases, that allows for much greater flexibility as to how you design your retirement plan. Not just for the financial side, but also for the identity side. It can be very difficult to all of a sudden just be done working. So this ability to phase in retirement or start to do things differently along the way can greatly help that transition into your retirement years. The next difference is inflation and interest rates. 30 years ago, you were earning a much higher rate on CDs and bonds. At the beginning of the 1990s, the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bill was about 8.2%. Then throughout the 1990s, it averaged somewhere in the mid to high 6% range. And all the while, inflation averaged just under 3%. 1990 itself, it was higher, but then throughout the rest of the 90s, inflation settled down, landed under 3% on average. Now, fast forward to today, the current yield on a 10-year Treasury bond is about 4.3%. So almost 4% less in terms of the yield that it's generating, and inflation has been all over the place the last two years. So this creates various challenges. You're not going to get the same yield on your bond or your CD rates that you used to get back in the 1990s. What does that mean? It means the way you construct your portfolio to meet your long-term retirement needs needs to look different today than it did 30 years ago. The next difference is technology and lifestyle. Technology has been one of the biggest changes that has impacted every single area of our lives over the last 30 years. If you retired 30 years ago, yes, there is technology, but retirement maybe was TV, it was community, it was hobbies. You had a much more simple, all else being equal, retirement at that time. Today, the options are endless. You still have TV and hobbies and community, but you also have social media. You also have instantaneous access to anything you can want to know about anywhere in the world, all at your hands. Today you can go find various travel accounts on YouTube or Instagram. You can immediately Google what those places look like and then ask ChatGPT to create an itinerary for you when you ultimately go and visit that place. Very different than what life looked like 30 years ago. This can be both a blessing and a curse. The opportunities today are far more than they were 30 years ago. However, it's tempting to get lost into that. It's very tempting to get lost in the social media side of things, the media side of things, without actually experiencing some what retirement can offer. The next difference is community and connection. 30 plus years ago, much of your community was much more built in. This was work, this was church, this was community. You lived in the same place for longer, typically because you worked in the same place for longer. Today's retirees are much more mobile. You've probably hopped around multiple different places for your career. You maybe even have family that's all across the country because they have gone to multiple different places for their career or for their schooling. So because of that mobility, which has opened up the world around us to be able to do more things, it's also lessened our natural built-in community. You don't have people living as close on average as you did 30 years ago. So because people move more frequently, because people are on the go more frequently, community is not just naturally going to be the default thing that happens to you. You must be more intentional about it, especially because social media gives the appearance, it gives the short-term feeling of being connected. Well, all the while you're not actually building the same types of relationships you did 30 plus years ago. So you must be more intentional today than you were 30 years ago when you go about building your community, especially in your retirement years. And then the final change, and this is a big one, is the view towards purpose and meaning. 30 plus years ago, many people thought of retirement as the finish line. You had completed your life's purpose, which is that sense of duty to your corporation, which is your ability to rise up through the ranks, to get promoted. Your identity was very much tied up in your career. Same thing today in some regards, but now people view retirement as how can I use that to continue this purpose I have, to continue this sense of meaning, not just with my job, but using as a blank slate, a blank canvas to say, what do I want to do? What's going to give my life the most meaning, the most purpose, the most joy, the most overall enjoyment? And you get to create that. So that mindset shift of it's not the end when you retire. In fact, in many ways, it's just a beginning. That is a mindset shift that I think is one of the most powerful and one of the most beneficial for those of you looking to retire and not just have a financially secure retirement, but get the most out of retirement to be able to look back on it one day and said that was one of the most meaningful seasons it could have possibly been. So retirement today isn't necessarily easier or harder than it was 30 years ago, but it's certainly different. And understanding these shifts will help pull you out of viewing retirement the same way your parents or your parents' parents viewed retirement in viewing it in a way that's going to support what you want to do with the rest of your life.
