If you were born in the 1960s, you will most likely be planning to retire in 2030….. or is there such a thing as retirement?

Maybe the concept of retirement will be completely different by then. In America media today, there is already a prediction that members of Gen X,  can no longer afford to retire. Rising taxes, higher costs of education, skyrocketing property prices. Will this trend ever end?

You All Laugh At Me

I am an optimistic person. However, I am having some concerns that the worrying scenario in a recent article by TIME magazine:

Consider a typical 2030 retiree–an educated Gen X woman, around 65, who has worked all her life at small and midsize companies…. Our retiree has put away savings here and there, but she’s also part of the middle class, which took the biggest wealth hit during the financial crisis of 2008. That–along with the fact that average real wages have been virtually flat for three decades, even as living costs have risen–means she has minimal savings, even less than the $42,000 that today’s average retiree leaves work with.

You may laugh at me. Or you can disagree with me and others who believe that this scenario may never happen.

Meanwhile, the mounting unemployment amongst the young people in Gen Y, the ‘Millennial Generation’, is a very scary thing. I am not talking about countries in developing countries. I am talking about the  unemployment rate amongst Europeans between 16 to 24 years old: 23.5% in the first quarter of 2013, versus 22.9% for the whole of 2012.

What can we do about it? The situation in Asia is different: economies are growing rapidly but how long can the growth be sustained?

Personally, I know from experience that you have to continuously work to

• maintain expertise: what makes you unique at what you do?
• broaden your social network: who cares about what you do?
• keep on learning: how is technology changing your field?

If we keep on asking ourselves these questions, perhaps TIME Magazine’s scenario won’t happen to us. Let’s work on building a different reality!