Retirement isn't the only stage of life or financial planning discipline that is headed for the history books, Edelman Financial Services founder Ric Edelman believes.
Nursing homes have lost 20 percent of their residents since 2010, and long-term-care insurance will soon be history as well, Edelman told attendees at Singularity University's Exponential Finance conference in New York on June 8.
Americans' longevity is increasing, and their financial lives are changing faster than most advisors or their clients can imagine. Clients who live until 2030 can expect far longer lives than most expect today, Edelman said, citing Ray Kurzweil, Google's chief futurist.
Breakthroughs in health care and medical science are likely to eliminate heart disease and cancer as major causes of death in 15 or 20 years, Edelman said. This may sound like happy talk. But in 1900, cholera, dysentery and scarlet fever were among the five major illnesses that caused people to check out. Where are they now?
This means that retirement, which was only a late 20th century phenomenon, will soon cease to be advisors' chief challenge. Advisors' major task will become career counseling, or second-career counseling, Edelman said, because even clients who are well off at 65 and would be able to retire if their life expectancy was 90 will face a different set of variables if they have a good chance of living to 110 or 120.
The upshot is that advisors should start thinking in terms of a cyclical lifeline of education, work, re-education, more work, a sabbatical and a third or fourth career rather than a linear lifeline. It means clients need to diversify skills and occupations and maintain their employment viability as much as they need to diversify their investments.
Edelman also predicted that many forms of education would become free or very inexpensive. States like Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and New York already have offered free or very cheap tuition to students, and free online education is appearing all over the planet.
At George Washington University, over 1,000 students are 50, though it's not cheap. But the cost of college has become so ridiculously high that it is unsustainable, Edelman implied. Free college may sound far-fetched, but it was not that long ago that America's best state university system, California's, was essentially free.
Hey, in the 1960s, the Free Speech movement was born at UC, Berkeley, a university that rivals Harvard in America or Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Both speech and tuition once were free at Berkeley, but these days it is hard to believe that was only 50 years ago.
Other industries that can expect to see higher growth rates include leisure and travel. The cruise ship business is booming, and on at least three cruise ships, state rooms have become permanent homes for residents who live there year-round.