The Mistake Solo Agers Make

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]What are some common things I hear from solo agers as a financial advisor? Stay with me.

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[00:00:16]There's a lot of information in the newsletter that I don't provide here on the channel. Let's talk about solo retirement and solo aging. So, solo aging is a very new concept. The concept of retirement is something that is new in the human experience. Before the 20th century, the concept of retirement simply didn't exist. It was expected that you would work until you die, or you work very close until you died.

[00:00:41]Maybe if you were really lucky, you had a daughter, a son, a daughter-in-law, someone in your family that would take you in and take care of you during the final years of your life.

[00:00:53]What changed all that was Social Security. So, the first Social Security check in America went out around 1940, and it completely transformed the concept of retirement in America. So, it became the expectation that you would work for a certain number of years, often until age 65, and then you would be able to live whatever life you had left in retirement comfort.

[00:01:17]Now, what they didn't tell you is that when they started cutting retirement checks in the 1940s, the average American life expectancy was like 62.

[00:01:25]So, most Americans were not expected to live long enough to collect Social Security.

[00:01:31]Fast forward 50 years, and things have completely transformed. Life expectancy now stretches into the late 70s, even early 80s for many Americans, and retirement is just part of the life working experience for most Americans.

[00:01:47]Americans expect to retire at some point. Solo aging is even a newer concept than retirement. The concept that you as a solo individual, can age alone and age successfully really has come about in the last 20 to 30 years.

[00:02:04]It is still being shaped and still being transformed. When I meet people who are solo agers, I always tell them they're on the vanguard of something new. They are the first generation to test and to try out new and different concepts. And while that can be exciting in some ways, being on the vanguard of a new concept or a new phase of life isn't always exciting because sometimes things just don't work out.

[00:02:29]What are some common things that I am hearing from solo agers right now?

[00:02:33]So, number one, I wish I had started saving earlier. Most people who are solo agers now didn't intend to be solo agers. They're people who are often solo because of divorce, maybe because of widowhood, maybe because of long-term care issues, but they often did not plan to end up in the situation of being a solo ager. And if they had known that they were going to be doing retirement as a solo ager, they would have saved more money when they were younger.

[00:03:01]It's a common misconception that solo agers need considerably less money than married couples. That's just not true.

[00:03:10]It's not that a solo ager needs half the amount of money that a married couple needs. They probably need more like 80 to 85% of the money that a married couple needs. And to be able to do that on a solo income as a solo ager, you have to either start earlier, put more money away, or both start earlier and put more money away. So, the benefit that the younger generation, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z has, is that they know from the jump that they are going to be a solo ager. So, when you know from the very beginning that you're going to be a solo ager, you can design yourself and your retirement in order to support that goal. And it bears out in the retirement savings numbers, a lot of Gen Z and millennials are starting to save much early for the concept of retirement. I believe Gen X and baby boomers began saving for retirement in mid-late 30s, whereas the Gen Z and millennials are often starting in their 20s to save for retirement. So, biggest regret I hear coming out from the start is I wish I would have started saving earlier.

[00:04:20]>> [snorts] >> Next one, this tied into started saving earlier, I wish I had saved more.

[00:04:25]A lot of people who are in retirement right now, baby boomers and silent generation, got minimal support for planning out retirement in the workforce. They saw the death of the pension and the rise of the 401k. If they were lucky, they were able to get professional financial advice through a financial advisor or through a company program, but there just wasn't a lot of information or education available on how, when, and in what order to save for retirement. People often tell me if they had better education and better knowledge, they would have saved a lot more. They would have been a lot more aggressive in saving. They would have realized that saving $200 a month wasn't going to cut it in retirement. They had the money, but they just didn't know to do the math or someone didn't do the math for them to show them that wasn't going to lead to a productive retirement. And if someone had just done that math for them, they could have saved a lot more and put themselves in a different position. What's different right now for millennials and Gen Zs and a lot of Gen Xers, there's a lot more information on social media and other sources about saving for retirement. You can go on the internet and look up a calculator where you can plug in numbers and figure out how much money you need for retirement. It doesn't mean that everyone is utilizing all those tools that are readily available to them, but those tools are available. And those tools are transforming retirement planning for solo agers. A lot of people who come and sit in my office have already done the numbers to some extent.

[00:05:55]Or when I do the numbers, they're verifying it against numbers that they're finding on this website.

[00:06:00]>> [snorts] >> So, there's just a lot more information on retirement saving and solo aging that just wasn't available to the baby boomers and to the silent generation.

[00:06:11]And I think that Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z will be able to plan out much stronger solo aging retirement because of the plethora of information that is now available on the internet and on social media.

[00:06:25]Next, common refrain that I hear, "I wish I would have made decisions earlier." Meaning, "I wish I would have done the estate planning, the advanced health care directive, who is my power of attorney, who is my successor trustee." All these really key and important decisions earlier in life. And I must say a lot of people push these decisions off until either the last moment or until advanced age, when if they had made the decision a few decades earlier, they would have had a lot more options available to them. So, one common refrain I hear among solo agers is I wish I would have made decisions, important decisions, earlier.

[00:07:05]Another common refrain I hear from solo agers is the importance of making cross-generational friendships. Of course, the people who become our friends are typically in the same cohort of age that we are. I would say I have friends who are maybe a decade older and maybe a decade younger.

[00:07:22]As you age, you're aging in a cohort of people. And if everyone is in the same cohort as you, it's going to make it a bit difficult because you're going to need to depend on people in some way.

[00:07:34]You're going to need someone to help you out when you get sick. You're going to need someone to go to the grocery store for you. Maybe be your power of attorney, successor trustee, all these different roles. And if everybody is aging at the exact same time, you just don't have the age bandwidth within your network to really sustain a crisis.

[00:07:55]One thing that I have noticed is everything seems to happen in three.

[00:07:59]Three people get sick at the same time or three events happen at the same time.

[00:08:04]And unless you have a friend group or a network that can really sustain that and help out, you may find yourself on your own. So, building those cross-generational friendships and building those cross-generational networks can really help while you are younger. So, that when you get older, you'll have a healthier support network to help you out. Now, just because you have a cross-generational network or friendship, doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to be there to help you. Oftentimes, people have their own families, they have their own children, they have their jobs, they have other things going on. But, when you do have a cross-generational diverse network, odds are someone somewhere can step up and help you out.

[00:08:48]And I've seen it really save people in very dire circumstances when they had a fall or they ended up needing to go into an assisted care center or they needed help with something and someone in their network or cross-generational friendship was able to raise their hand and say, "I will take on responsibility for this project with this person and I will help them out." So, making those cross-generational friendships and making decision earlier are very important.

[00:09:17]So, this is something that I I hear a lot among solo agers. Being involved in decisions for the entirety of their lives as long as they have the ability to make decisions. There is a point in a person's life when decisions are made for them. And it's never openly discussed, it's never openly put to the person that we are going to start making decisions for you.

[00:09:40]It happens over time. Suddenly, people are having meetings about someone who is not in the room. Suddenly, someone is just informed of decisions that were made at said meetings after the decisions have been made and implemented. It is part of the aging process. It's an important part of the aging process, but it's also a very scary part of the aging process when decisions are made in your absence. Now, hopefully everyone hopes that they will have perfect cognition and perfect health to the day that they depart this earth. Life just doesn't really happen that way. It just doesn't really happen that way. There typically is a decline in physical and mental health, especially towards the end. And you want to be involved in the decision-making process about yourself and about your life as long as possible.

[00:10:27]But, the reality of it is at some point you're probably going to have to turn the wheel over to someone else. I think as a society, as humans, we could do a much better job of communicating that to a person that they're not going to be able to make decisions on their own behalf. Their power of attorney or daughter or sister, someone's going to have to take over for them. And I wish we could just sit down and all have an adult conversation that is what is happening. Often times, that's not what happens in the situation.

[00:10:56]So, those are just a few top tips or top things that I hear from solo agers. Let me know if you want to hear more about conversations with solo agers. They're some of the more interesting conversations I do have as a financial advisor. And I'm having them more and more often as more and more people in our society are solo agers. So, tell me what you think. Tell me what you like and what you don't like. And if you found this information useful, please share and subscribe. Thank you.