EDITOR’S NOTE: The Richland Source Gray Matters team traveled to New York City on Oct. 24 for The New Old Age summit sponsored by The Atlantic. This was one of the topics covered at that convention. 

What if retirement isn’t the end?

With the help of modern medicine, human beings are living longer than ever before.

During New Old Age conference last month in New York City, one of the key topics was about how to make living longer a better experience.

Speakers from numerous areas of expertise were part of a panel discussion before more than 50 eager listeners.

A group of speakers talked about the retirement promise. The panel included Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Ida Rademacher, Vice President of Aspen Institute and Executive Director of Aspen Financial Security Program, and Vivian Nava-Schellinger, Senior Manager, National Council on Aging.

The group discussion was led by Steve Clemons, Washington Editor at Large for The Atlantic.

The group discussed retirement as an aspirational goal and how it is not an option for many living in rural, poverty-ridden communities.

“People who either live paycheck to paycheck for most of their lives and don’t have a chance to save, or got hit by the 2008 recession,” Bruder said, setting up the idea behind her non-fiction book and the journey she took to complete it. “They realized if they stayed in traditional housing, the costs would eat up all they had.”

Bruder followed those who picked up their lives and lived in trailers.

“Retirement is not an option,” Nava-Schellinger said. “And what do you do then?

“It’s not so much that this is a new phenomenon, I think that we are focusing on this side of aging — looking at what it could be. But we need to start looking at what it really is.”

The group discussed low-wage workers who may never retire.

“The only way they’ll stop is when they can’t work anymore,” Nava-Schellinger said.

Clemons pointed out many workers will never have enough money to retire. So, what are options working Americans can do to save money before they reach retirement age?

“What you are seeing now is a different way of retirement,” Radermacher said. “Pensions and retirement plans are not as common as they used to be. We can sit in rooms and talk about retirement systems and the way a 401K work and how money automatically goes in to those accounts.

“But 55 million people — about half the labor force — don’t have access to an employer or provider plan. I think we need to see a change in corporations.”

The group discussed how workers are more mobile and because of that, savings plans need to be more mobile as well.

“The average peoples’ jobs now are four years, down (dramatically), so (savings) can fall through cracks (when a new job is taken),” Radermacher said. “I think we have the component parts. We have the technology and the ability.

“In other countries, they have decided this is a priority to solve. We just haven’t done that yet.”