TIAA survey: twice as many respondents favor exercise and diet as financial planning

In a TIAA survey released October 1, 32% of respondents said their energy in preparing for the future leaned toward optimizing physical health through exercise and diet, 16% leaned toward building up their financial planning, and 53% split their attention evenly. That works out to two respondents favoring physical health for every one favoring the financial plan. The research, "Retirement in the Age of AI and GLP-1s," examines how GLP-1 drugs and AI-driven medical advances could push retirements deeper into people's 80s and 90s. The premise is that those added years are now more likely to arrive; the findings suggest the preparation for them is pointed somewhere other than the portfolio.

Respondents grasp the arithmetic even where they are not acting on it. Some 83% reported at least one financial fear about living longer, and 43% doubted that conventional planning, such as working toward a savings target that lets them retire at 65, was designed for lifespans this long. Running short of money for basic day-to-day expenses topped the list of longevity fears, cited by 46%. The runner-up fear was having too little left to enjoy the added years while also covering long-term medical, memory or nursing care, and three in 10 worried about becoming a financial burden on their children or other relatives.

The doubt runs deepest among women and lower-earning households. Nearly half the women surveyed, 49%, lacked confidence that traditional planning accounted for longer lives, against 36% of men. Among households earning under $75,000, 53% lacked that confidence, roughly double the 27% recorded for those at $150,000 or more. Income is likely standing in for something else in that spread, since the household without an advisor is the one with nobody running the long-horizon numbers, which leaves the doubt sharpest where advice is scarcest.

"Healthcare is one of the biggest expenses in retirement, and one every American must plan for. That is what strong financial planning is built to address," David Nason, chief executive of TIAA Wealth Management & Advice Solutions, said in a statement accompanying the survey. The worry, in other words, is not something an advisor has to install; 83% of respondents already carry at least one financial fear about living longer. What the 16% appears to measure is how little of that worry has been turned into paid planning, and what the survey captures is stated attention rather than behavior: where respondents said their energy leaned, not what they did with it. Whether the number moves is a question for the next edition.