How Long Is Retirement? Nobody Knows for Sure

Nearly every plan needs a timeline, and retirement is no different. In your early 20s, your plan to furnish an apartment probably factors in the likelihood that you’ll move in the not-to-distant future. So you buy a cheap coffee table; you don't need it to last for years.

Planning retirement would be so much easier if we knew how long it was going to last. You’d know the precise number of years you’d need to save for, and from that, you could calculate a pretty accurate amount. Of course that would also mean knowing the date of your last day on earth, and a lot of people probably would choose not to know — putting them right back in the same position of not knowing how long retirement will be.

What happens when you act as if it’s an unknowable amount of time? People tend to underestimate how many years they’ll need to fund without income from a job. That’s according to a survey from TIAA, a financial services firm that provides annuities and insurance to employees of nonprofit organizations.

TIAA calls this “longevity literacy,” and most of us aren’t exactly literate when it comes to a realistic understanding of how long we could live. And that lack of a grip on lifespan means you don’t have one of the most important foundations of any plan.

For more, read our reporter Pete Grieve’s story on skewed retirement perceptions.

— Jill Cornfield, deputy editor

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