Escape The “Longevity Squeeze” by Leveraging Your Expertise

Your accumulated expertise, professional networks, and life experience aren't consolation prizes for getting older.

If there’s one thing Generation X is accustomed to, it’s the “way things have been” changing just as we show up. 

As Sharon Newsome puts it, we’ve been the beta testers for just about everything: 

• Instead of “Leave It to Beaver” childhoods with stay-at-home moms, we watched “Leave It to Beaver” reruns alone at home after school.

• Instead of the lucrative corporate pensions that made the concept of a Golden Years retirement a possibility, we became sacrificial guinea pigs in the great 401(k) experiment.

• Instead of simply raising our kids to adulthood with all its challenges, many of us in the Sandwich Generation are helping support our adult children and aging parents at the same time.

• And now, we’re on the cusp of a new economic reality in a rapidly changing America — one without pensions or true safety nets — which has already shifted the age of retirement upward. 

With increases in lifespan and healthspan, this new economic reality also means that very few can afford the popular conception of retirement at 65 while living into their late 80s, 90s, and beyond.

Plus, more people than ever simply don’t want to stop working at some arbitrary cutoff point that no longer makes sense.

As Stanford professor Susan Wilner Golden puts it:

Sixty-five as an age marker that signifies the entry into old age no longer works. The classic view of modern life was one of three stages: learn, earn, retire. No more. It doesn’t make sense anymore. You don’t retire at sixty-five if you have 35 percent of your life left.

We grew up with the idea that our late 50s and early 60s were "wind-down" years. A time to play it safe, think small, and prepare for decline and withdrawal from the workforce.

And yet, the data tells a completely different story. 

Contrary to popular belief, there’s an increase in productivity in knowledge-based jobs with age, and Gen X is perfectly fine with new technology. Research also shows that professionals aged 45-65 are more likely to start successful businesses than younger entrepreneurs.

Your accumulated expertise, professional networks, and life experience aren't consolation prizes for getting older. They're competitive advantages that can create more wealth and freedom right now during the prime of your life.

But first, you need to understand what you're really up against.

The Longevity Squeeze

People aged fifty and over already account for more than half of consumer spending in the United States and 83 percent of household wealth. And by 2030, people above sixty will become the largest consumer bloc of all, which will endure for many decades and become the new normal.

Add in the demographic inevitability of an increasingly older population thanks to longer lifespans combined with plummeting birth rates, and it would seem that we should be full swing into a massive restructuring of society in general and the world of work in particular. 

This doesn’t even factor in what appears to be inevitable medical advances that will further extend both healthspan and lifespan. Put it all together, and the idea of retirement in your 60s is on the cusp of obsolescence. And you’d further think employers would be proactively trying to retain experienced talent.

Unfortunately, things don’t happen as efficiently as we might like in the real world. So the people most likely to experience a painful transition period as the world shifts older are, you guessed it, Generation X.

If you're between 45 and 65, you're caught in what I call the Longevity Squeeze. That’s made up of four converging forces that make traditional retirement planning obsolete for our generation.

1. The Retirement Savings Crisis 

If you're like most people in your 50s, you're significantly behind on retirement savings. The median retirement account balance for Americans aged 50-59 is just $117,000. That's not enough to fund even five years of retirement, let alone the 30+ years you're projected to live after leaving the workforce.

2. Market Uncertainty

The ten years before retirement are supposed to be when you “catch up” on savings, given you’re in your peak earning years. But many analysts are projecting a flat market for the next decade, and this was before Trump’s tariffs and the tanking of the US Dollar. And while AI will have a significant impact on society, the current stock market is in an AI bubble that will make the dot-com implosion look mild by comparison.

3. Employment Vulnerability 

As society becomes increasingly older, longer careers will become the norm. But again, we’re in a transitional period where we’re facing AI disruption, looming recession, and workplace ageism. Every corporate "restructuring" disproportionately affects older professionals with higher salaries. Your job security is an illusion at a point when you can least afford to lose your income.

4. Retirement Obsolescence 

Here's the biggest problem: Living 30+ years without working is financially and even psychologically unsustainable. The traditional retirement model was designed when people lived to 65 or 70, not 95 or 100. And while every Gen Xer I talk to says they have no problem working longer, the “squeeze” means it may not be up to you if you’re dependent on the good graces of an employer.

These aren't separate problems. They're interconnected forces creating a perfect storm that makes the conventional retirement path impossible for millions of us.

But what if this crisis is also our greatest opportunity? And what if all it takes to succeed is what we’ve been relying on our entire lives — the resiliency and self-sufficiency that have made us the most entrepreneurial generation ever.

The Prime Time Strategy: Your Path Forward

The Longevity Squeeze presents a real problem for Generation X, but it’s also one we’re uniquely qualified to conquer, just as with earlier challenges. 

Smart professionals are implementing what I call The Prime Time Strategy: a systematic approach to midlife reinvention that turns your accumulated expertise into location-independent income streams.

This isn't about "lifestyle design" or "following your passion." This is a rational and necessity-driven process for people who recognize their current trajectory won't work.

The Prime Time Strategy also has four elements:

1. Expertise Monetization – Create a solo business based on decades of accumulated expertise, experience, and wisdom while augmenting yourself with AI and other tech.

2. Location Independence – Design your business so that you can live and work from anywhere in the world, while producing multiple expertise-based income streams.

3. Global Citizenship – Relocate to one or more countries with a higher quality of life, lower cost of living, and affordable healthcare access.

4. Timeline Rebellion – Start living your best life at midlife instead of waiting for some mythical “golden years” retirement.

The next phase of Further Premium will be an in-depth exploration of The Business of Expertise. We’ll dive into the business models, revenue streams, and marketing strategies that will help you build a robust and sustainable business.

Because this is such a vital aspect of why I choose to publish Further, and likely the biggest problem that our generation will face in our lifetimes, I’ll be kicking off this expansive Premium Guide with several lessons that are available to all subscribers, both free and paid.

More next week.

Keep going-

Brian

further: flashback

🎶 Poison – Nothin’ But A Good Time, Open Up and Say… Ahh!, 1988 🎶

Of all the 80s hair bands, Poison truly did appear as if they were having Nothin’ But a Good Time. That’s because they knew how to smartly use video to make their already energetic live shows look like the most fun anyone’s ever had. (YouTube)

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