The Children Being Born Today May Never Retire

Why Gen Beta Exposes the Cracks in Today’s Retirement Systems - and What Financial Services Must Do Next

By Simon Chan | Strategic Longevity Advisor | Founder, Adapt with Intent

In most boardrooms and strategy sessions, conversations about retirement tend to focus on the next decade: How will we support Boomers and Gen X as they exit the workforce? How should we reshape products, portfolios, and pension plans for this generation?

But this lens - though important - is too narrow. As I emphasized during a recent keynote at the CLIEDIS Mission Possible Conference for financial services leaders, the more provocative and forward-looking question is this:

What will retirement look like for the generation being born today?

And more importantly: Is the financial services industry prepared to serve them?

Prudential’s new Generation Beta whitepaper offers a rare window into this future. It explores how children born between 2025 and 2039 may live, work, and retire - and in doing so, it exposes how outdated our current assumptions, systems, and products already are.

This isn’t just a future concern. It’s a present-day strategic gap.

The Retirement Model Is Breaking

The most striking finding from the report is that 66% of Americans believe retirement will be fluid, meaning people will move in and out of it over the course of their lives. This isn’t just a generational mindset - it’s a signal of systemic misalignment.

The traditional model - learn, save during a 40-year career, full-stop retire at 65, and draw from accumulated assets - was built for shorter lifespans and more linear lives. It no longer reflects economic reality, workforce behaviour, or personal aspirations.

Additional findings reinforce this point:

• 48% of parents believe their children may never fully retire.

• $1.88 million is the perceived amount needed for retirement, but most doubt they’ll reach it.

• 80% say saving for retirement should begin at birth.

These numbers reflect a growing awareness of the limitations of our current system - and the urgency of building financial strategies that support longer lives, evolving careers, and more fluid transitions.

The Rise of "Precautionary Planning"

One of the most important shifts that surfaced in the report is a behavioural one. Today’s Millennial and Gen Z parents are starting to think differently - not just about their own retirement, but about their children’s.

According to the whitepaper:

• 80% of parents want to begin retirement saving at birth.

• The most common financial regret among adults is not saving enough for retirement.

This reflects what I call "precautionary planning" - a growing trend in which families, shaped by volatility and fading institutional trust, are proactively trying to design financial resilience across generations.

These parents are no longer just saving for college or weddings. They are thinking 60 years ahead - and looking for guidance, tools, and institutions that can meet them there. For financial services providers, this is a critical moment to engage.

Retirement Is No Longer Just Financial

Another insight from the Prudential study is less about money - and more about meaning.

In a design exercise, participants were asked to write postcards to their future grandchildren. The responses weren’t about wealth, assets, or inheritance. They centred on values: curiosity, kindness, and courage.

This subtle shift reveals something powerful. Increasingly, people view retirement not just as a financial milestone, but as a time for personal growth, identity reinvention, and emotional legacy.

Supporting this, the study found:

• 55% of Americans now define retirement as a time to spend what they’ve earned - not necessarily to preserve wealth for heirs.

As such, retirement planning is evolving into something more holistic. Clients want help designing a phase of life - not just funding it. Yet most advisory models, products, and communication strategies haven’t caught up.

The Financial Services Industry Is Expected to Lead - But Isn’t Yet

The final - and perhaps most urgent - finding is this:

• 81% of Americans believe financial services firms have the power to reshape the retirement system.

• 57% say today’s products are designed for a world that no longer exists.

Consumers are granting the industry both responsibility and permission. They want retirement tools that are:

• Flexible across life transitions

• Adaptive to caregiving, sabbaticals, and phased work

• Personalized for different values, family structures, and goals

This requires more than updating brochures. It calls for a deeper rethink of what retirement strategy means in an era of 100-year lives.

A Strategic Call to Action

This isn’t about abandoning traditional planning principles. It’s about expanding the playbook. As I often share with leadership teams: if the rules of life have changed, your retirement strategy should, too.

Financial institutions that embrace this shift have an opportunity to:

• Redesign offerings that reflect fluid, lifelong engagement

• Build trust across generations by supporting early and intergenerational planning

• Create holistic retirement platforms that integrate income, purpose, well-being, and legacy

As the Generation Beta whitepaper reminds us, the future of retirement is already forming in the minds of young parents - and it’s vastly different from the systems we’ve inherited.

Leaders who act now can shape what comes next. Those who wait may find themselves designing for a world that no longer exists.

Simon Chan is a strategic longevity advisor, founder, and CEO of Adapt with Intent Inc. He works with financial institutions, pension plans, and higher education leaders to reimagine strategy in an era of demographic disruption and 100-year lives. He is a Global Ambassador for the Stanford Center on Longevity .