Isn't it going to hit all western countries hard? Seems to me Japan is just first in the list...
As far I'm concerned, I'm living in Europe and I'm not confident at all that I'll get any retirement before my 70. Knowing that the lifespan increased a lot but not necessary the good-shape-span, it seems to me a better strategy is to enjoy more free time now by reducing work hours than to bet on an uncertain future.
> it seems to me a better strategy is to enjoy more free time now by reducing work hours than to bet on an uncertain future
I've always thought this way, uncertainty or not. Why wait until you're old and frail to enjoy life?
I've always put the matched contribution into my retirement accounts, because it's free money, but no more than that. The rest of my savings go into places where I don't have to wait until my life is nearly over to access them.
Investing for retirement for me is a hedge against being old, infirm and still having to work just to survive and live with stress and anxiety.
You should do the math on how much you'll likely actually have in retirement, and see how you feel about it, before it's too late to change your strategy.
I put almost 20% of my net salary in to my pension, and my employer another 8%, and it's still unlikely that I'll be able to retire particularly early or will live a particularly comfortable life in retirement. For one thing, if I'm still renting when I retire I'll likely be barely scraping by.
Maybe I should actually do the math; I guess I just assumed that with the full matching contributions on what should be decent 401k's, I should already be getting set up for that "basic comfort, not having to worry about working to survive" baseline. Not that I'm burning the rest of the money I make.
My basic view is that I don't want to be rich when I'm old so that I can make "dream purchases" or live on a cruise ship for the rest of my days or whatever; I want to be living comfortably and fully for my whole life.
The basic rule of thumb advocated is to assume a 3-4% safe withdrawal rate in retirement.
So for example, if you want a $30,000/yr (inflation adjusted) income in retirement you need to save yourself a $1M (inflation adjusted) pot. Over a 30 year career with a 5% (real, above inflation) investment return that takes $1,200/month.
Lots of people think saving a couple of hundred bucks per month will leave them super comfortable. The math tells the scary reality.
I have this "fun" slider on my retirement account's website that shows different values for different retirement ages. In order to hit my minimum, I had to slide it all the way to age 85. "FUN"
The match is different for everyone, as is timeframe. If at 20 you put in 10000 per year for 10 years and nothing at 65 you will have more than someone who starting at 30 put in 10000 every year. However in the real world you start out after college with less income, student loans, and needing to get a place to live so few do this. That doesn't even get into inflation which is also a factor.
It will probably hit them (as well as other Asian countries like South Korea) harder because they have not had the same levels of immigration to buffer the demographic change like in the west. Overall things have just gotten increasingly uncertain and insecure throughout the developed world, retirement at 65 is probably a pipe dream for most millennials.
Most people trade automation for a better lifestyle. In 600 even though between then and now we went from 95% of females needing to spend 14 hours per DAY spinning raw material into thread to machines automating all that work. In 600 95% males spent their time farming. Now we have machines to make thread and so very few females even know how to make thread and most that do it is just something for fun. We have machines to farm and so only a tiny number of people are farmers.
Despite all that there is still a lot of work to do. There wouldn't have to be, most of the work being done is something we could skip if we decided to let science/society stagnate at current levels. Most people have decided they want more.
Japan seems to have abandoned that strategy in favour of attracting migrant workers from SE Asia. At least that's the impression I got when I last visited the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau. Makes sense given how reliant the country still is on manual labour. They even hire people to walk you past roadworks when a physical sign alone would do just fine.
I'd extend that to many high-paying jobs as well. Professions that are researched-based, like law, may be easily displaced by automation.
Currently, my thought is that skilled trades are the least likely to be displaced, especially in maintenance, non-routine roles. There's currently a decent amount of research to automate the routine parts, though, like new construction.
Sometimes, “somewhere else” is upward on the value chain and is thus an improvement.
Former plowshare-pullers become horse-steerers become tractor drivers. Each new invention does have it’s attendant complications, but they tend to be nicer than the basic, first job. Ie, I’d rather be a tractor mechanic than a plowshare puller.
I’m glossing over generations of social upheaval and re-skilling here, but that’s the pattern so far.
That's the storytelling people keep repeating. That is not what is actually happening. Or at least, population is not getting older as fast as it's made to be and is not the biggest factor.
For instance, France have, successfully, bet on immigration. But the public discourse being what it is, since the population was getting older supposedly, we are now lacking in schools and universities because we chose to not build or/and renovate infrastructures. So now we have a real education problem for instance.
But the real problem with state pension fund in France is not that the population is getting older, the reality is that companies are simply not paying their due.
With all sort of tax credit and exemption, various French government chose to artificially lower salaries for all employees. Most of them are not even aware as this is not treated on the case by case but globally at company level.
The aim/excuse (depends on your political color) is to fight unemployment. The side effect, is that the state pension fund id depleting slowly but irremediably. On the other hand, to be fair, if you have massive unemployment, money is not entering the state pension fund either.
But the population getting older is a trick politician love to use to not have explain complicated issues and arbitrations made in depth. The lazy way out IMO.
Pay as you go vs fully funded makes little difference - consumption goods such as nursing care cannot be carried over from one period to another. Unless France is going to use the depleted pension fund as an excuse to cut benefits, being underfunded only makes a difference in terms of whether the next generation of workers transfers goods to retirees in the form of taxes or pension fund contributions.
> I'm not confident at all that I'll get any retirement before my 70
Where I am(also EU), retirment is at 75 and already talks about raising it to 79, because lifespan increased, funds are in strains etc. I wonder if I will live up to that age to retire or it'll again shift several times, as the way world is changing with climate change and everything, life will probably be very different and expensive.
It is very strange, because I indeed remember it raised(there were news and criticism/opinion pieces everywhere) in 2015 to 75. However, now I checked wikipedia, it shows 65(+- few months).
May be my memory is holding onto a proposal that didn't pass or something. I apologize for the misinformation.
>... enjoy more free time now by reducing work hours than to bet on an uncertain future.
Unknowingly or not, you've just echoed a chapter in Peter Thiel's book Zero to One with such perfect clarity, Mr Thiel may start to look like a savant.
