Saturday, April 17, 2021

Personal Finance class discussion response to: Retirement, Wills and Estate Planning

(Originally posted to the HCC LearningZone discussion page about Retirement, Wills and Estate Planning on March 24th, 2021)


When it comes to retirement, I don't have a 401k benefit at my current job (Doordash) and I don't plan to retire anyway. I expect to work indefinitely.

Since the advancement of medical science will accelerate due to faster processing speeds and improved research methods, someday in my / our lifetimes, the cure for all aging-related diseases, and even aging itself, will arrive, thereby making the concept of retirement obsolete. As we would become clinically immortal, we would no longer have a need to retire.

If a future employer still imposes a mandatory retirement age despite new trends in life expectancy and extension and clinical immortality becoming a thing, I would take the company-sponsored pension and put that towards an education in a new trade / field / major and use that "vacation time" to go back to college in order to retrain for some of the newest, trendiest vocations of the time. Then I would find another job in that newly-trained field. Then I would work for another 30-50 more years until whenever I get tired of the job / company or reach an arbitrary time limit that the company imposes on their long-term employees. Then I would take another "vacation" for a few years (whether to retrain for yet another new job or pursue a hobby) then find another company / field / vocation to work in. These steps would repeat indefinitely. As far as I know, I can still receive a prior company's pension even while I work for a new employer so this would mean more income streams at once while I take advantage of being clinically immortal, therefore the newly acquired ability to work and live indefinitely.

Now in case an accident or still-uncured disease incapacitates me from the ability to work / function, I still need to prepare a living will. It may cost a few hundred dollars at an estate attorney's office, to have help in putting the will together.

Also, annuities are the opposite of life insurance and therefore insures beneficiaries who are to live longer lives, by providing an income after a certain age until death. Should clinical immortality arrive and become accessible to the common man and woman, annuities may be stretched to the breaking point and may become obsolete.

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