Inside Money: Demented demographics - the world's number what problem?

People are "enumerate and imprecise" about retirement funding, says Russell Investments' Tim Noonan. Photo / Thinkstock

David Chaplin, editor of financial services industry website Investment News looks at growing old and retirement funding.

Excluding the "demented ones", Russell Investments' Tim Noonan, told the audience assembled at a secret Auckland location this week, old age isn't half as bad as popular culture makes it out to be.

Half-way through his next sentence it dawned on me that Noonan wasn't referring to hordes of angry, letter-to-the-editor-writing octagenarians, but making a technical point.

It was very early, just past dawn in fact, and his meaning seeped slowly through my morning fog. Noonan was saying most of those who make it into old age without dementia (which affects half of Americans aged over 85, according to the internet) are "hale".

That 'hale' threw me for a few seconds, too, but I caught his drift: this is good news for the undemented longer-lived. (Noonan was also optimistic that a dementia retardant, or even cure, wasn't that far away.)

Unfortunately, late-stage haleness comes at a price: for many, it could be unaffordable.

As countless surveys have shown, the biggest fear pre-old people have, Noonan said, is running out of money in retirement.

And while the poverty/old age quinella is a reasonable fear, he said for most it just remains a vague, underlying sense of dread.

The problem is people are "enumerate and imprecise" about retirement funding, Noonan said. The solution requires a number.

Arriving at that number - which essentially maps projected lifetime assets against liabilities - may not be easy. Noonan and fellow thinkers in the Russell US tank have come up with what he reckons is a pretty good software system for calculating the retirement 'funding ratio'.

That won't be available in NZ anytime soon. But in the interim, Noonan's book, Someday rich might fill the information gap.

I should read it someday.