Each spring, an estimated 700,000 mah-jongg enthusiasts eagerly await the National Mah Jongg League’s annual playing card. It’s like the College Football Playoff bracket, the Grammy Awards and New Year’s Eve bundled into one event, except with tiles and even sharper opinions.
Since 1937, seasoned players have relied on the card’s precision to build a winning hand. So, you can imagine the kerfuffle when this year’s edition arrived with two misprints, sending players into a frenzy of rereads, rule debates and calls to the league hotline.
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Beyond the game tables, a different kind of misprint is now quietly affecting millions of Americans: the fine print on retirement.
For decades, the career script was straightforward: Work until 65, cue the retirement party, file for Social Security and maybe take a few cruises with the family. But just like a misaligned mah-jongg hand, the traditional script for retirement no longer seems to work well for many American workers.
Investing for Your Longevity
A New Playbook for Retirement
Longer lifespans, rising health care costs and shifting economic realities have changed the game. In fact, Transamerica’s 2025 “Retirement in the USA: The Outlook of the Workforce” survey found that 36% of workers either plan to work until age 70 or not retire at all. And more than half of workers plan to work at least part time in retirement. “Many people plan to continue working because they want to stay active, engaged and purposeful. They enjoy the work they do and the social connections. And the paycheck is helpful, too,” adds Catherine Collinson, founding CEO and president of the nonprofit Transamerica Institute and its division Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
Brian Miller, head of target-date fund product management for Vanguard, sees a similar pattern among retirees. He comments, “Through Vanguard’s ‘How America Saves’ research that regularly tracks investor retirement actions and behaviors, we continue to witness a changing picture of what retirement looks like, with many investors working in some capacity after age 65 for a variety of reasons.”
Vanguard’s research also found that many investors wait until their early 70s to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts. “That is part of the reason why the landing point of the Vanguard TDF glide path occurs at age 72,” says Miller.
There are a couple key drivers in the backdrop. First, only 37% of American workers have at least $250,000 set aside for retirement, while another 35% have less than $100,000, according to data from the 2025 EBRI/Greenwald Research Retirement Confidence Survey. Second, the time frame for retirement is on an upward trend. The U.S. Census Bureau anticipates the number of centenarians to quadruple from around 101,000 in 2024 to 422,000 by 2054. “Our population is aging and so is the workforce. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 1 in 4 members of the workforce are age 55-plus, and age 65-plus are projected to be the fastest growing segment of the workforce,” says Collinson.
The 5 W’s of Longevity Investing
Longevity investing isn’t just about crunching the numbers for a long lifespan. Stuart Ritter, retirement insights leader, U.S. intermediaries, for T. Rowe Price, recalls how feedback from a focus-group participant shaped his own views about retirement. The moderator asked the participants to state their names, and then describe their own retirement transitions, using just one word. One participant stepped forward, introduced himself and said, “Failed.” He explained, “I failed retirement.”
Sure, the participant had enough money to fund a long retirement. But after a few weeks in retirement, he discovered that he merely drifted through each day, looking for things to do. (Evidently, there’s a limited number of times a person can stand to alphabetize his spice cabinet.) In this case, the participant felt unfulfilled in retirement because he was not emotionally prepared for it.
This participant’s experience was not unique. While 74% of individuals age 50 to 59 have made a serious effort to plan financially for retirement, only 35% have planned emotionally for retirement, according to research by T. Rowe Price.
To help close the gap, T. Rowe Price created the Visualize Retirement program to help individuals plan holistically for retirement. The program is designed to address the key drivers of retirement happiness and success (lifestyle, health care and meaning) and uses five questions, or the five W’s, to jumpstart the discussion process:
1. Who will you spend time with during retirement?
2. What do you want/need to do?
3. Where do you want to live?
4. When would you like to retire?
5. What’s your “why,” or your sense of purpose, in retirement?
“From a financial perspective, the five W’s can help you anticipate how your spending needs might change in retirement,” Ritter says. “Start with your vision, learn what you might want to do to prepare emotionally for the transition, and prepare your financial plan to go from vision to reality, allowing you to view retirement as a journey, not just a destination.” This will help you determine how much you need to invest to reach your goals.
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Investing in Longevity Trends
The Business of Aging: Push vs. Pull
Older adults above age 50 have tremendous spending power: This population group accounted for more than half of global consumer spending, or $35 trillion, in 2020, which is expected to grow to nearly 60%, or $96 trillion, by 2050, according to AARP’s Global Longevity Economy Outlook.
Consumer business groups, ranging from goods and services to transportation and leisure, are eager to meet the emerging demands of an aging population, too. These trends not only reflect the retirement nest-egg needs of older investors, but they can also inform investors in general about companies that may benefit.
Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, suggests there’s a push-pull dynamic in motion for the hearts, minds and spending share of older adults. “Push” products are designed specifically for older consumers, like hearing aids or home care services. “Pull” products, on the other hand, are more aspirational; that is, they attract aging adults not by age, but by lifestyle. Examples include Dyson’s lightweight vacuums, Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s intuitive tech or Viking Holdings Ltd.’s (VIK) culturally rich cruise experiences.
Health care organizations also want to engage more effectively with older Americans. Panayotis Vardas, an adult cardiac surgeon and an associate professor in the division of cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that the key differences between chronological age and biological age will influence health care treatments and innovations in the future.
Chronological age simply tracks an individual’s time since birth. Biological age, however, attempts to “quantify the cumulative wear-and-tear in cells, tissues and organ systems,” Vardas says. Vardas anticipates artificial intelligence, genomic studies and targeted therapies will enhance the standard care of an aging population over the next two decades. He adds, “Preventive medicine can keep an aging workforce productive and compress morbid years, offering both human and economic dividends.”
Where Longevity Meets Opportunity
By 2040, the global population of individuals age 65 and older will reach 1.3 billion, double what it is today, according to data from PGIM. As lifespans grow, so do investment opportunities across sectors. Here are a few investment themes that may benefit from longer lifespans:
— Health care and nutrition needs may increase demand for chronic care and wellness products.
— Real estate may benefit from the need for more senior housing and medical office space.
— Technology for aging in place may support independent living through smart-home systems and telemedicine.
— Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are focused on age-related therapies and AI-powered drug discovery.
— Financial planning can be geared to support longer lifespans, such as durable retirement strategies and specialized advice.
— Beauty and wellness firms cater to longevity through anti-aging products and lifestyle services.
— Leisure and travel are top priorities for older adults who seek experience-driven spending.
Whether you’re planning for retirement or your next mah-jongg move, it pays to read the fine print and prepare for a much longer game. The winning hand in retirement, much like in mah-jongg, comes from strategy, adaptability and a little foresight.
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The Power of Longevity Investing: When Retirement Goes Off-Card originally appeared on usnews.com
