The Silver Tsunami: Retirement Resources on the Web

Used to be that people didn't have to carefully plan for retirement, because they usually didn't live very long after they quit working - not that they necessarily knew that. In 1965, the average U.S. life expectancy was 70.2 years, only 5 years beyond retirement age. Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), the average 65-year-old American has 18.4 more years to look forward to, thanks in large part to advances in medical treatments and pharmacology.

Cancer deaths are dropping denial, Ahmedin, et al., "Cancer Statistics 2007," CA:A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, January/February 2007, Vol. 57, No. 1: 43-66). So is mortality caused by stroke, coronary artery disease, pneumonia, and the flu. It's gotten to the point that, in 2006, Alzheimer's, a disease that usually strikes after retirement age, rose to become the eighth leading cause of death in Los Angeles County (Lin, Rong-Gong, II, "Alzheimer's Now a Top Killer in L.A. County; It's the Eighth-Leading Cause of Death in the Region, Reflecting a National Trend," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16, 2006, p. [3]).