NEWS FROM THE FUTURE: Beware the silver tsunami — richest generation yet can’t afford to retire

Dateline: August 30 2035

Dorothy Jones, lovingly nicknamed “Granny D” at work, closed her laptop with a sigh. It was her 75th birthday and she was meeting some of her few remaining friends at the cocktail lounge down the street.

She checked herself in the mirror, ensuring that there were no crumbs from her office birthday cake stuck in her frilly dress. The face staring back at her from the mirror was simultaneously kind and sad. Life hadn’t turned out as her generation had expected when they were 30. She sneered at their naive dreams:

Retire early, at 55, take a world cruise and stop off for months in Southeast Asia, maybe buy a small car and cruise around Australia, jump off in LA and drive across the US to Florida, board the next cruise liner to explore the Caribbean.

On the way to the elevators, she waved bye to her colleagues, wondering what they really thought about her. Do they feel sorry for me because I have to work? Do they really like working with someone who could be their grandmother? “Oh, stop it, you old hag,” she mumbled to herself as she rode the elevator down. She liked the mix of generations in the office, she loved the 20-somethings’ energy chasing the career hungry mid-30s gang, while the older folks took it easier and watched the office politics.

“Here we are, the richest generation ever, and we can’t afford to retire.” Dorothy got all worked up after her first glass of chardonnay. “We are the boomers, we created the welfare state, and now? The coffers are empty, our pensions have been halved, and we have to work... or hope our kids can support us. Some life!”

“Hey, did you guys hear about Sam Davids? No? His investments seemed to have paid off. He retired last week when he turned 68... lucky bugger.”

“Yeah, but he’s a GenXer, they planned their retirement differently. They didn’t trust the pension system that we built.” Dorothy looked at her old friends, wondering who would be around next year for her 76th. She pondered if she should tell them that next year would also be her retirement party. She had done the numbers, gone over them several times with her son, and they looked solid: she was one of the lucky ones — she would finally be able to retire.

“A toast to the luxury of retirement,” she said and raised her glass. /First published in Mindbullets, August 29 2024

Too old to rock ’n’ roll, but too young to die
The agony of being in your 120s

Dateline: December 20 2037

It’s tough being 122. If you thought puberty or being a twenty-something was challenging, just wait until you get to 120-something!

You’ve got the body of a 90-year-old; so what? It’s still an effort to get out of bed, and those neuroprosthetic implants keep your mind sharp, but the constant software updates are literally giving you headaches.

Slowing and reversing physical ageing has become more than a science — now it’s an industry, and once you’re on that bandwagon, you’re hooked for (the rest of your) life. It’s been a breakthrough in medical science, treating ageing as a disease at the cellular level.

But let’s face facts: you can’t just get involved when you feel like it. If you want to have the benefits of a younger body and a youthful mind, you’ve got to be committed. To an endless regime of personalised supplements and strict optimum nutrition — and that’s just for starters. The “age vaccine” is also a bundle of genetically modified viruses, to cut and paste your DNA, and that has to be “updated” every few years.

The big problem comes in with lifestyle changes; we bold oldies are so busy with life, we’ve got no time to enjoy living. Everything that’s really great about life is bad for us, and staying alive is just so much work, it’s tedious. And then there’s the cost of life. No wonder some people want to check out early.

It’s really tough when you’re too old to rock ’n’ roll, but far too young to die! /First published in Mindbullets, November 26, 2015

Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.