When will you age out of your career?

New York - One way to prepare for retirement is to save.

Another way: Don’t retire.

It’s surprisingly common to put very little aside and

hope you never need to hang up your cleats for good. Among investors under age

35, more than four-fifths (83 percent) say they plan to work during retirement,

according to a survey released this month by Merrill Edge. It’s not just

millennials: 79 percent of Generation X and 64 percent of baby boomers who are

still working agree.

And how many retirees surveyed actually have some sort of

job?

That would be 17 percent.

From a financial perspective, working into your 70s or

80s can be a great idea. It’s also completely unrealistic for many workers,

especially if they want to stick to their chosen profession. It’s not just

blue-collar workers with physically demanding jobs who can’t work forever. Even

office workers need to prepare for the possibility that their careers will have

a natural shelf life.

“As white-collar workers, we tend to believe we’re immune

to the factors that cause blue-collar workers to retire early,” Boston College

economist Geoffrey Sanzenbacher said at a recent conference.  His

research, done with colleagues at Boston College's Centre for Retirement

Research, shows how “age-related decline” hits even well-educated professionals.

Read also:  Early retirement puts your financial future at risk

As we get older, not all our skills decline at the same

rate. And in some ways, we get better. Older workers tend to be more

knowledgeable than younger workers, research has found. Though it can take

longer for older people to learn new skills or process new information, they

are often much better at tasks they’ve practiced extensively. Physical ability

varies, too. An older worker who can’t balance on a roof or deliver a

dishwasher might have no trouble holding on to a broom.

Skills decline

Taking these differences into account, the Centre for

Retirement Research used US government data to rate each of 954 occupations on

the likelihood that its required skills will decline with age. The result was a

“susceptibility index,” with compensation and benefits managers ranking lowest

and dancers at the top.

The researchers then looked at data on when people

actually retire. Controlling for other factors, they found that people in

occupations that ranked higher on the susceptibility index were indeed likelier

to retire early. A white-collar worker ranking higher than 75 percent of

the group was 7.5 percent more likely to call it quits before age 65 than a

worker in the 25th percentile.

Why are some white-collar jobs more susceptible than

others? The answer lies largely in the extent to which they require different

types of intelligence.

Types of

intelligence

“Fluid intelligence,” your ability to process new

information and situations, tends to decline with age. Meanwhile, “crystallised

intelligence,” your knowledge of facts and how to perform particular tasks,

generally increases through your 50s and 60s, researchers have found, with

little decline after that. That’s one reason designers and stock traders rank

higher, or are more susceptible to decline, than, say, teachers and academics.

“The notion that all white-collar workers can work

longer, or that all blue-collar workers cannot, is too simplistic,” the study’s

authors concluded. For example, photography, a job that can require lots of

fluid intelligence, can be more susceptible to age-related decline than jobs as

cooks or cleaners, which depend on physical and cognitive skills that last late

into life.

Read also:  Why you need to rethink your retirement plan

Not all the news about aging is bleak. While the health

of one segment of the US population has recently gotten worse, Americans on the

whole are living longer, healthier lives than ever. A record number are working

past age 65, and the share of seniors with dementia has plunged, from 11.6

percent in 2000 to 8.8 percent in 2012. 

Still, even as some talk about raising the Social

Security retirement age, we can’t all work as long as we’d like. Over the

course of your career, you might want to move away from jobs requiring physical

strength and quick thinking, and toward positions that use the knowledge and

wisdom you’ve accumulated.

Exercise and good nutrition can help you stay productive

longer. And you might want to try saving more, if at all possible. The IRS

allows people 50 and older to save an extra $1,000 in individual retirement

accounts and an extra $6 000 in 401(k)-style plans. These “catch-up”

contributions may come in handy later on.

BLOOMBERG