Get ready to live your '100 Year Life'

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Are you financially and emotionally prepared for the possibility that you could live until the age of 100? I'm Claer Barrett, FT Money editor and editor of the Next Act, our new portal on FT.com for those in later life. Joining me now are London Business School professors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, the authors of this book, The 100-Year Life, Living and Working in the Age of Longevity, and Lindsay Cook, the FT's Money Mentor columnist.

Lynda, I'm going to start with the question, is living to 100 a gift or a curse?

Well, you know, Claer, living to 100 is absolutely brilliant. Imagine all the things that you can do in 100 years. You can spend more time with your children. You can learn. You can go back to university. You can do more work. I think it's a fantastic gift.

Well, I suppose one of the big swing factors will be how healthy you could remain for that 100 years. And certainly, in all of the debates we've been having in FT Money and Next Act, our new hub, about funding the cost of care in later life, this is something that can often frighten our readers. But perhaps, leaving the issue of health and investing in your health aside, there are many things that people need to change about their mindset when it comes to facing up that we will be around for longer and we'll probably need to work for longer too.

Absolutely. And I think what we've got is we've got more time. And your point about health is crucial. But what the data shows is, on average, we're living longer, we're healthier for longer, and so we have the opportunity to do more things.

There are more risks around that. But we have to prepare. And our key thing is that we seem to have designed a three-stage life, based around a life expectancy that is no longer valid. So that's the reason why pensions are struggling at the moment, why education is set up to have a career of 30, 40 years, and why we're not well prepared to seize the opportunity of a 100-year life, or also make sure we minimise the risks.

One thing, in particular, that is facing today's retirees, more than it has done in the previous generation, is whether they will run out of money because of the way that pensions have changed, especially for professional workers.

Absolutely. Everybody used to have final salary pensions, and they would know that they're going to retire on 1/2 or 2/3 of their income, and they could plan. Now, the last 20, 30 years, most private companies, or quoted companies, have gone to defined contribution, which means all the risk is with the employee.

Employment doesn't go on forever. You don't have a 40-year career. And an awful lot of people are let go in their 50s.

Oh yes.

And they end up being self-employed, often working for the same corporation, but on a freelance basis, earning less and with no pension. And I come across a lot of people who are very worried about - they've said, oh, I put my 50s aside for building up my pension, and now I can't.

And they've got their children in education, or needing help with housing. They might be looking after their own parents. And now, it is frightening to know that the average pension pot at retirement is about £50,000. That sounds bad. For women, it's under £30,000. For men, it's about £75,000. You don't get much for your money when you've got that sort of money.

Thanks ever so much, everyone, for joining me, Lynda Gratton, Andrew Scott, and Lindsay Cook. You can read more about these issues and read Lindsay's article about returning to university in later life on Next Act, the FT's new, free-to-read online hub for those in later life. Find us on FT.com/nextact. We'll see you again for another video in a month's time.