Retirement in 2050

1 | Retirement will span decades, not years

If you were 65 in 2020, you could expect to live for about 17 more years, based on the average life expectancy.²

Fast forward to 2050, and life expectancies jump up at least 3 to 8 years.³

That could mean up to 20 or 30 years of retirement. That's practically a lifetime — and it's nearly twice as long as today's average retirement.⁴

2 | The average retirement age will go up

Twenty to 30 years from now, many folks will retire later in life. That'll mostly be due to longer life expectancies, the need to fund longer retirements, and Social Security raising the "full retirement age" to 67.⁵

So, how much will retirement get pushed back? It could be at least 5 years, with more folks waiting until their 70s to retire.⁶

3 | The average retirement income could increase

Gen-Xers and Millennials can expect to see more retirement income than their Boomer parents. How much? About 24% more retirement income, when adjusted for inflation.⁷

And women could see the biggest jump in retirement income. In fact, the average Gen-X or Millennial woman is predicted to earn more than double the average Boomer woman.⁷

4 | Medicine will be personalized & "internalized"

Getting older in the future could be a lot easier with mind-bending tech changing health care in some big ways by 2050.⁸

Internal nanosensors, nanoparticles, nanorobots, and AI will monitor health, deliver medicine, and predict illness. Robotics and neural implants will cure injuries, including many that were once incurable.⁸

5 | Transportation gets smarter

Most retirees in 2050 will drive electric vehicles with vertical takeoff capabilities, and you'll see far more charging stations than gas stations in the future.⁹

There will also be smart traffic control systems, self-driving cars, and maybe even underground freight tunnels.⁹

And expect mass transit to come back too, with ultra-high-speed Hyperloop systems connecting big cities across the nation.⁹

6 | Burgers may be replaced by bugs

Food for the retirees of 2050 won't look the same as it does today. In fact, whether you or your kids will be retiring in 25 to 30 years, the menu of the future could feature lab-grown meats, insects, and seaweeds.¹⁰

And instead of planting crops and raising animals, farmers of the future could be cultivating bacteria, yeast, and microalgae.¹¹

That could mean that meat and dairy, as we know them today, could become quaint relics of the past by 2050 — similar to how we look at horse-drawn carriages these days.¹¹

7 | Vacations go out of this world

Forget about cruises, cross-country road trips, European vacations, and even worldwide tours in 2050.

A few decades from now, space and lunar tourism could be all the rage among retirees. Imagine week-long vacation packages to space, complete with moonwalks, spacewalks, and Mars visits.^12,13

There could even be an Earth-Moon infrastructure system that makes it easier to build colonies and resorts in space.¹²