Is Your Retirement Plan Built To Last?

More Americans are living to 100 and beyond. Here’s your plan to thrive for the long haul.

- Elizabeth O'Brien

Orville Rogers is 100 years old and routinely breaks records at track meets around the country. Sure, the World War II veteran doesn’t have much competition in his age bracket, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that Rogers is in his fourth decade of retirement and still running in all the ways you want to be when you hit triple digits: a model of physical, emotional, and financial health. Rogers trained pilots in World War II, then went on to a successful career as a commercial pilot. His experience can help train us all for the future. Today’s retirement is a marathon, not a sprint, and Rogers is crushing it.

“Some people think I run because I can, but that’s backward,” says Rogers from his home in Dallas. “I can because I do.”

If America could just bottle Rogers’s can-do spirit—and his undoubtedly terrific genes—the country might fare a bit better in the decades to come. The world’s centenarian population is expected to grow eightfold by 2050, according to a Pew Research Center report of United Nations estimates, with America leading the pack in the sheer number of citizens age 100 and up. For a couple who are both 65 today, there’s a 50%chance one member will live to be 92, according to the Society of Actuaries.

You can chalk up much of this longevity to the fact that fewer Americans are smoking and dying of tobacco-related diseases. In fact, the cancer death rate has plunged at least 26% from its peak in 1991, according to the American Cancer Society. Medical breakthroughs that extend people’s lives are happening all the time, and it’s hard to say which cure is on the brink of discovery.