Join us for a compelling two-part series that delves into how artificial intelligence is transforming our approach to retirement. In Part 1, we explore the promise of AI in personalizing our health and financial planning, offering tailored healthcare and investment strategies that adapt to our unique needs. Imagine a future where AI helps us live longer, healthier, and wealthier lives, with technology that's as customized as your Netflix recommendations.
In this episode, host Rachael Van Pelt discusses the impact of AI on retirement and lifestyle creation. AI is expected to disrupt and shape various aspects of our lives, including healthspan, wealthspan, work, and social connections. Rachael emphasizes the importance of getting curious and exploring the opportunities and challenges presented by AI. In terms of healthspan, AI can enable early diagnosis, personalized treatment plans, remote monitoring, and predictive insights. In terms of wealthspan, AI can provide personalized investment strategies, real estate guidance, accessible financial advice, and continuous learning and adaptation. Overall, AI has the potential to improve our next act and lifestyle longevity.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Retirement in the Age of AI
03:30 Overcoming Resistance to Change
04:29 Learning from Past Technological Transitions
07:49 AI and Health Longevity
13:37 AI and Wealth Longevity
Episode 2 - Retirement in the Age of AI (part 1 of 2)
Hello and welcome to Next Act Ninjas, the podcast for longevity -minded adults who are redefining retirement and lifestyle creation. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt, a retired healthspan scientist turned realtor and coach. Whether you're considering a luxurious downsized life or aspiring to be an active sunbird, this is the place to create your best next act. Today, We're doing part one of a two part series on what retirement in the age of AI is going to look like for us.
Because here we are, it's early 2024 and what feels like the dawn of a new era. Whether we like it or not, it appears that AI is going to massively disrupt and shape our next act. In fact, things are already changing incredibly fast due to the multi -trillion dollar race to incorporate AI into just about every aspect of our lives. It is clearly going to impact our healthspan, our wealthspan, how we work, how we play, and even how we connect to each other. And, while there's a part of me that simply wants to duck and cover, to go off the grid until all of this sorts itself out, I am well aware that this isn't really a viable option, is it? In fact, I've come to the conclusion over the past few months that it is imperative that we get curious and really explore this exciting, albeit crazy, in a world of AI and how it's set to transform the way we plan for and live out our next act. What's coming is going to make mastering our lifestyle longevity more urgent than ever before.
First, I want to invite you to take a moment to activate your imagination. Imagine a future where your retirement plan is as personalized as your Netflix recommendations. A plan tailored precisely to your life goals, financial situation, and risk tolerance. Imagine personalized healthcare that keeps your body in tip -top shape for decades to come. Imagine tech that keeps you connected to loved ones, living out your purpose, contributing to society more than your ancestors could ever have dreamed possible.
Whether it's managing your finances, staying healthy, learning new things, or connecting with loved ones, AI has the potential to make your next act easier and more enjoyable. But I know that it's not going to all be rainbows and unicorns, is it? There will undoubtedly be challenges along the way that we're going to need to learn to navigate. That's what I want to cover over the next few episodes here on Next Act Ninjas.
Of course, the first of those challenges will simply be overcoming our resistance to change and the polarizing effect of this rapidly evolving technology. Because as with any technologic breakthrough, the tendency is going to be for people to divide into two very different camps. One camp will embrace the new AI related tech and look for opportunities to use it to improve lifestyle.
Another camp will most certainly run from all things AI, wanting to maintain some sort of status quo. Interestingly, my own teenage daughter falls into this latter camp. She's a bit of a Luddite. But this is not our first rodeo. We've been here before, haven't we? Those of us who are currently on the cusp of our golden years, we got to experience the dawn of the personal computer internet, smartphone era. We are a generation who happily rode the analog to digital transition, and we benefited greatly from it. Now, maybe it moved a little slower than what we're experiencing today, but still, we learned from this experience, and we can take what we learned and apply it to what's coming.
I can vividly remember, when in graduate school, I excitedly took our lab from storing all of our data on paper spreadsheets to using Microsoft Excel. And when I started doing all of my statistics by hand, but then I got to transition to using statistical software that crunched those algorithms for me, these tools, they allowed me to analyze more data and do much more complex statistics very quickly. It felt miraculous at the time, much like the advanced AI algorithms feel now. Did this create new challenges for scientists? Of course it did. The ease with which we could store and crunch big data sets, it motivated us to collect gobs and gobs of data. The problem with this for scientists is that, it leads to lazy scientific exploration. It could encourage what we call fishing expeditions. And that's when people sift through data looking for the chance correlations rather than taking the time to come up with a well thought out testable hypothesis.
And the reason I bring this up is because more data, more information is not always better. Sometimes it can even lead us on a wild goose chase. It can make us feel like we're making progress when in fact we are going nowhere. Do you remember when we first got email? It felt like a blessing, didn't it? We could easily stay in touch with friends, family, without the lag of snail mail. And now what? Now we spend so much time on email that we've had to come up with all these complex sorting strategies, spam filters, digital detox strategies. It's crazy, isn't it? Technological advances often come with a price.
So as we delve into the ways in which AI will undoubtedly help us improve our health and wealth longevity for years to come, I think it's important for us to keep, you know, tucked in the back of our mind, a healthy dose of skepticism. We're going to want to evaluate as we go. Accepting or rejecting AI advances is not going to be black and white. We can't stick our head in the sand any more than we can let everything in all at once. In each area of our life, we're going to need to experiment and weigh the risks and benefits so we can decide for ourselves what will actually add to our lifestyle longevity.
But I'm going to first start by talking about how AI has the potential to improve our health longevity or our healthspan. As we explore retirement in the age of AI, one crucial aspect that stands out for me is the transformative role in healthcare that AI is going to have, and more specifically, how it's going to impact your healthspan. The synergy between advances in longevity science and advances in AI is going to mean not just adding more years to your life, but more life to your years.
And early diagnosis is one of the most promising areas where AI is making an impact. AI systems are already being trained to recognize patterns and anomalies and things like blood work and medical imaging, like your X -rays and CT scans, and it can do it much faster and sometimes much more accurately than the human eye can. This leads to early detection of conditions such as cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, often long before any kind of symptom appears. And then in the very early stages when treatment can be most effective. What this means is potentially life -saving interventions can be made earlier, significantly increasing your chances of a positive outcome.
Then once those early diagnoses are made, AI can be used to create a personalized treatment plan for you. Now, I know doctors have been fantasizing about personalized medicine for years, and it hasn't really come to fruition just yet. But with AI advances, it's finally becoming possible to fully analyze data from a wide range of sources. That includes medical records, genetic information, and even lifestyle factors. And that's going to help healthcare providers craft treatment plans that are tailored to your unique health profile. We'll finally be able to do away with the one -size -fits -nobody approach to treatment that often isn't suitable due to factors that vary from person to person, such as age, comorbidities, medication sensitivities.
Personalized treatment plans should, in theory, lead to better outcomes, fewer side effects, and a higher quality of life during treatment. Additionally, AI -powered remote monitoring and management technologies, they're going to make it easier for people to get treatment even when they can't make it into the doctor's office. Every day, we're seeing wearable devices and home monitoring systems get better and better. They can track your vital signs, your physical activity, and all kinds of other health metrics in real time. And then what they do is they transmit those data to your healthcare providers. And that allows for a more continuous stream of information and for proactive management of chronic conditions. It allows for immediate interventions when problems arrive. And overall, it leads to a more dynamic approach to health maintenance. It means you will be able to enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing your health is being monitored without constantly having to go into the clinic, into the hospital for those in-person visits.
And beyond early detection and remote monitoring, AI is also offering more predictive insights. In other words, it can forecast your potential health risk based on trends in your data. So for example, an AI system could analyze a variety of your data, such as physical activity, body weight, your blood glucose over time; it can then predict your risk of developing something like diabetes. So if it sees trends in increased sedentary time, weight gain, high blood sugar, that would indicate it might be time to take action to prevent your pre -diabetes from becoming full -blown diabetes. That predictive capability is going to play a crucial role in extending not just our lifespan, but our healthspan.
AI technologies is also going to improve mental health. Chatbots, virtual assistants, they're going to provide support for mental wellness, cognitive therapy, even companionship. These AI -driven tools, they have the potential to help combat loneliness, support your memory, even offer cognitive behavioral therapy. As a result, I think mental health support should become much more accessible, far less stigmatizing as we get older. And these are just a few of the many ways in which AI will absolutely revolutionize healthcare and give us the tools to live longer, healthier, more vibrant lives.
I'm going to go deeper on these healthspan technologies in future episodes, but in the meantime, please share how you see AI improving your healthspan? What excites you? Or what scares you? Put those in the comments below. I'd love to hear where you're at with this.
And next, I want to turn our attention to how AI is going to impact our wealth longevity or our wealthspan. Because just as personalized health care will extend your healthspan, personalized investment strategies should also extend your wealthspan. AI algorithms, they're great at analyzing vast amounts of data. This includes market trends, economic indicators, your personal financial history. All of that together means they'll be able to recommend investment strategies that are tailored specifically to you. So again, rather than just a one size fits nobody approach, they're going to be more nuanced strategies designed to maximize your returns and minimize your risk based on whatever your specific retirement timeline and goals are.
You'll have access to things like dynamic fund management. That's where AI monitors your pension fund or your 401k in real time and continuously adjusts your contributions and investment allocations in response to changes in the market or your personal life. For example, if you receive a promotion or a salary bump, AI could automatically adjust your retirement fund contributions. Or if you're nearing retirement and the market's volatile, it might shift some of your investments into safer assets.
What's great about this dynamic approach is that it can help ensure that your retirement funds are always adapting to both the economic landscape and your personal circumstances. Isn't that remarkable? Now in the realm of real estate, AI can be just as transformative. We're going to be able to use it to navigate the market landscape with much more precision and insight than we do so far. We're already able to analyze vast data sets such as market trends, rental rates, demographic shifts, even future development, construction. This provides us a much more comprehensive view of where there are opportunities to buy, to sell, to invest.
For example, if you're considering a vacation home, AI is going to be able to evaluate the combined effects of seasonal demand, potential rental income, long -term value appreciation, and all of that's going to give you highly tailored advice that aligns with your goals. Similarly, if you're thinking about downsizing, AI can assist in identifying properties that not only fit your budget, but also your desired lifestyle, the amenities you're looking for, the community you want. And that's going to ensure your move enhances your overall quality of life, doesn't diminish it. And that level of personalized data-driven guidance is going to empower you to make more informed decisions about your next real estate move so you can maximize your financial wellbeing, your lifestyle satisfaction.
The other great thing AI is going to be able to do is it's going to make financial advice more accessible to more people. Traditionally, personalized financial advice, tax and estate planning, it's been a luxury available only to those with significant assets. But now AI democratizes access to this kind of advice. It makes it more available to everyone, regardless of wealth. Through apps and online platforms, AI will provide financial advice that's tailored to your personal circumstances, answers your questions, offers recommendations, just as a human advisor would, but it's going to be a fraction of the cost and available 24/7.
What I find even more revolutionary about AI though is its ability to continuously learn and adapt over time. It's also what makes it scary for some people. But truly, as it gathers more data about you and the world, it's only going to get smarter and smarter and offer you more precise recommendations that can evolve with your changing needs over time. And that continuous adaptation is going to ensure that your retirement planning remains optimal, even as your life and the world around you changes.
Lastly, AI will empower you with much more knowledge. By providing insights into your financial health and retirement readiness, AI tools are going to help you make informed decisions about your next act. They can simulate different scenarios, show you the potential outcome of decisions like retiring early or investing in certain assets or adjusting your savings rate. You'll be able to run, multiple scenarios and that's going to empower you to take even better control of your retirement planning because you're going to be armed with the knowledge and insights that were previously accessible only to financial professionals.
And when you incorporate AI into your next act planning, it's going to make the process more efficient, more personalized, but also it's going to be accessible, it's going to be adaptable. In a nutshell, as you learn to utilize these technologies, you'll not only improve your healthspan and well -span, you'll be tailoring your next act precisely to your dreams and your goals. How cool is that?
I'm going to end there for today. I want to continue this conversation in our next episode of Next Act Ninjas. There's just too much to cover. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. How do you envision AI impacting your retirement years and your lifestyle longevity? Leave your comments below, your stories, questions, insights, they truly enrich our conversation and help all of us learn from each other.
And please don't forget to share, like and subscribe to this podcast. Let's embark on this journey together, a journey of creating our best next act and mastering our lifestyle longevity.
Until next time, live well, love more, age less, my friends.