Saving for retirement is the traditional conscientious young person thing to do. It doesn't make any sense if you believe in radical life extension or uploading or the singularity (assuming it's within your lifetime). As medicine and technology increase, retirement age will stop even being a thing, because it won't make sense to stop working at 65 and then live 65-650 more years.
On the other hand, investing to maximize your long-term income and wealth potential makes a LOT more sense than saving for retirement. Basically: saving for retirement is like taking the sure 450 instead of flipping the coin for 1000.
Saving for retirement makes sense even if you don't expect to retire provided that you can access the retirement funds for other purposes, and that the laws of your country are such that this is still an advantaged position. In the United States and some other countries, saving for retirement is investing to maximize your long-term income and wealth potential.
Saving for retirement makes more sense, not less, if there will be radical life extension. Do you want to work for 650 years? or work for 50 and play for 600? (Feel free to define "play" as...
I know I said I'd be gone... but this was just a comment originally, and I noticed it may actually be relevant.
Elharo said in Munchkin Ideas:
I'm interested in the following:
Why should people invest in retirement? Or, instead, why should someone invest as much as most do in retirement.
Few facts that make it a boggling question for me:
You are 10% to 20% likely to die before you enjoy even your first retirement year.
People adjust much more to harsh economical conditions than they believe they would. They remain happy, as many studies by Seligman and others show.
People who retire are only happier as retirees if they retired by choice (I lost the paper, sorry).
Most people here live in rich countries - darn, hate to be the exception! - , and their state would happily provide them with at least the maximal retirement plan legal in my country (aprox 2000 dollars/month). And surely would provide them with double the minimal (about 200/month) if they needed.
If you have descendants, they may support you in case you are still alive, and if you are not rich enough to keep a house, you have a good excuse to be in company of loved ones (you have nowhere else to go).
Last, but not least: That person is not even you that much anyway.
Given all that, I have no clue what the whole fuss about retirement plans, and being 60% of a rich old person with a crappy body is all about, specially if you are in the grave.
I mean, in the cryopreservation chamber, of course.
Edit: A related question not worth its own post, but maybe worth discussing, is Should inheritance "jump" a generation. Everyone inheriting from grandparents, instead of parents? Just the abstract ethical question. Regardless of implementation procedure.