At EML we often work with schools and groups of young people as they look to understand and prepare for the world they will inherit. One group of graduate recruits asked a simple question but were not prepared for the answer, or its implications.

Given they were in their early 20s, they wanted to know, given reasonable assumption, at what age they should be thinking about retirement. The ‘best guess’ answer was somewhere between the age of 80 to 90 – and even then they should be planning for a reasonable retirement.

The discussion that followed shoed that this generation have no intention of following in their parents footsteps. This is the generation who will not:

• Enjoy almost full employment
• Benefit from generous defined benefit pensions
• Inherit significant wealth from their parents
• or benefit from rapid house price inflation

Instead they will:

• benefit from improved health and better medical care
• benefit from the extraordinary access and insight offered by the internet
• look to enjoy life ‘as they go along’ rather than in retirement
• expect to enjoy multiple careers during a working life