The recent passing of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa reveals a profound truth about our current approach to later life. Their deaths—occurring days apart and discovered only by chance—serve as a stark reminder that our current conception of retirement planning is dangerously incomplete.
By nearly any standard, Hackman, a celebrated two-time Oscar winner, had achieved what most would consider success and presumably retirement financial security. Yet, at 95 and suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, he was unable to respond when his 65-year-old wife reportedly succumbed to a virus in their New Mexico home. For approximately a week, he continued alone until his death—only discovered much later by a maintenance worker.
Reports indicate that Arakawa had been Hackman’s devoted caregiver, doing whatever she could to keep him healthy—wearing masks when out and encouraging him to be physically active. Despite being relatively young at 65, she shouldered the immense responsibility of caring for a spouse with advanced cognitive decline, a role that likely left little room for her own needs or social connections.
This tragedy exposes the critical limitations of today’s retirement planning narrative. Society has constructed a storyline defining retirement planning around asset accumulation peppered with images of later life leisure while neglecting what might be best described as the infrastructure necessary to support healthy aging and caregiving. The vision is not altogether incorrect, but it is woefully incomplete. Financial security, while essential, functions much like electricity: you can’t do much without it, but its mere presence doesn’t ensure living well in older age.
The Longevity Preparedness Gap
Instead of traditional retirement planning, we should cultivate a new narrative around longevity preparedness that lays the foundation for establishing various types of support beyond financial security alone. Longevity preparation is the ongoing process of building redundant support systems, cultivating diverse social connections, implementing adaptive housing solutions, and arranging for care contingencies—all complemented by, but not replaced by financial readiness. Similar to earlier life stages where we plan meticulously for education, careers, housing, and family, older age requires awareness of what’s ahead and preparation.
Consider the tools, time, and effort to prepare children for college. There are actions, not just finances, with campus visits, standardized test preparation, application essay coaching, financial aid research, dorm room shopping, roommate coordination, and more. We should approach our later decades with equal thoroughness—or perhaps even more awareness and deliberate action.
Aging Successfully Requires Support Systems
Due to its complexity, older age necessitates even more preparation than previous life stages. A few of the many essential systems and preparations include:
- Coordinated Care Support: Establish reliable coordination systems between older adults and family caregivers to ensure continuous support.
- Social Connection: Deliberately cultivate and maintain friendships to prevent isolation, which poses health risks comparable to smoking.
- Transportation Planning: Identify and arrange transportation alternatives before driving becomes problematic, ensuring continued mobility and independence.
- Adaptive Housing: Implement home modifications that offer both aesthetic appeal and lifelong physical accessibility, enabling aging in place.
- Home Maintenance: Arrange for trusted home services that can respond to both routine and emergency needs.
- Technology Integration: Adopt technology solutions that evolve from providing convenience to becoming essential care tools as needs change.
The Hackman deaths show that the absence of redundant support systems can lead to isolation and tragedy, even with financial resources. When Arakawa became ill, there was no backup system—no one to step in for her or her husband. This vulnerability is exponentially magnified for those with limited financial means, who face a devastating double jeopardy: inadequate financial resources coupled with insufficient support systems for navigating the challenges of older age and caregiving. While the Hackman’s story made headlines due to their celebrity, countless Americans with far fewer resources face even greater risks of falling through the cracks.
America’s Coming Eldercare Crisis
As the population ages—projected to increase from 58 million Americans 65 and older today to nearly 90 million by 2050—and with the Alzheimer’s Association anticipating that Alzheimer’s cases could more than double, situations like the Hackmans’ could become alarmingly common. Currently, over 53 million Americans are unpaid family caregivers, a number that will grow significantly in the coming decades, most will not have the support they need and will be unprepared to give the care they will want to provide.
The misconception that only older caregivers need support is dangerously flawed. MIT AgeLab’s CareHive, a global research panel of caregivers, shows that caregivers of all ages are strained in meeting the wide variety and intensity of their loved ones’ needs. Arakawa’s case illustrates that even relatively young caregivers can become overwhelmed and vulnerable.
Financial Service’s Transformative Role in Longevity Preparedness
Action across multiple sectors of society is urgently needed, beginning with the financial services and retirement industry. They must recast the narrative around retirement, building upon the business of asset accumulation and insurance to provide comprehensive planning tools that address the full spectrum of longevity needs. This means creating longevity tools integrated into employer-sponsored retirement plans, insurance distribution, and financial advisor services that address evolving needs across retirement – a life stage that includes multiple phases and often rapid change.
For instance, today’s retirement discussion could include longevity preparedness to raise awareness of potential needs in later life and assist in evaluating not only future financial security but also assessing the strength of social support networks, whether the current home can adapt as individuals age, caregiver well-being, transportation, and other factors to ensure people are genuinely ready for older age. Such innovations would enhance the client’s understanding of the importance of financial security by recognizing the full spectrum of needs and their related costs in retirement.
Meanwhile, government and policy leaders must strengthen home and community-based services, enabling aging-in-place care while creating funding mechanisms that support family caregivers of all ages and incomes. Access to affordable high-speed broadband and technology-enabled services to support vulnerable lower-income and rural older adults would provide an essential safety net, complemented by healthcare reforms addressing better care coordination of public and private services.
Aging Successfully Begins With Family Conversations
Ultimately, true preparation must begin decades before retirement for individuals and families. For instance, according to AARP research, most people wish to age-in-place, but less than half believe they will be able to do so—often due to concerns about the affordability of necessary modifications and support services. Therefore, tools regularly assessing housing requirements and understanding that accessibility and maintenance needs will evolve with age are essential.
Likewise, few people recognize the stark reality that 70% of people over age 65 will need some form of long-term care, which can quickly deplete savings. Consider this:
- Home health aide services typically cost over $60,000 annually.
- Senior housing and skilled nursing often exceeds $100,000 per year.
- Most families lack adequate insurance coverage for these expenses.
Candid family conversations about care preferences, expectations, and limitations are essential to realistic plans rather than relying on abstract financial projections alone. Creating backup care support systems is equally important. For example, identifying:
- Extended family members who can share responsibilities.
- Trusted friends who can provide family caregiver relief.
- Community resources that offer assistance.
- Professional services as needed.
Longevity preparedness seeks to ensure that no single person alone is the sole lifeline when needs arise.
The financial services industry, from retirement plan service providers and advisors to insurance distributors, can play a pivotal role in setting the agenda for these critical family conversations. This can give greater urgency and clarity as to why financial security matters while providing a comprehensive longevity preparedness approach to later life that extends beyond money alone.
Planning Versus Preparedness
The difference between having a retirement plan and being genuinely prepared is significant. A plan is static—a document created at a specific moment, and change is primarily driven by market dynamics and a hypothetical date for retirement. Financial plans are often based on the assumption that we can find a way to get by if finances are in order. It might include target savings amounts and portfolio allocations – even bucket lists that include travel, grandchildren, and legacy.
Financial plans alone, however, typically fail to address the infrastructure needed to support years of life in older age, which for many will be about 8,000 days. Remarkably, this is the same number of days between reaching legal drinking age and crossing into middle age. That’s a lot of time with many possible events and life transitions.
In contrast, longevity preparedness is dynamic and evolves as circumstances change. It involves anticipating needs before they become critical, having concrete solutions and services identified, and being ready to address expected and unforeseen challenges. This includes establishing backup caregiving arrangements, maintaining social connections that serve as early warning systems, and regularly reassessing housing and transportation needs.
The difference between planning and preparedness may seem subtle, but they greatly differ in process and action.
- Planning focuses on documents; preparation focuses on established systems.
- Planning calculates numbers; preparation cultivates relationships, service providers, and solutions.
- Planning addresses what you hope will happen; preparation addresses what is likely to happen.
Longevity Preparedness: A New Paradigm for Aging Successfully
As we reflect on the Hackman family tragedy, we must recognize that what we’ve traditionally called retirement planning addresses only a small part of what aging well requires. The financial security that Gene Hackman achieved could not provide the comprehensive support system that he and his wife required in their most vulnerable moment.
Moving from retirement planning to longevity preparedness requires a fundamental shift in our narrative and understanding of older age—from viewing retirement as a financial finish line with punctuated moments of play to seeing it as a complex life stage requiring ongoing adaptation and support. This shift demands continuous awareness, proactive action, and the humility to acknowledge that none of us can navigate the challenges of aging alone, regardless of our financial resources.
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