- This week, the Royal Family is marking 100 years since Queen Elizabeth II was born – she lived to the age of 96
- There were an estimated 625,000 people aged 90 or over in the UK in 2024, the most recent year we have figures for (Source: Estimates of the very old, including centenarians, UK: 2002 to 2024 | ONS – released October 2025)
- At that time there were 16,600 people who were at least 100 years old – this had doubled in 20 years
- The number of men over the age of 90 is increasing faster than the number of women – men now make up a third of people of this age
- What impact does living longer have on your prospects for retirement?
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at AJ Bell, comments:
“There were plenty of unique and remarkable things about the life of the late Queen, but the fact she lived long enough to celebrate her 96th birthday isn’t as much of a rarity as it once was. Flying to her celebrations by helicopter, the Coldstream guards playing Happy Birthday, and a 41 gun salute still probably count as fairly atypical though.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are currently over the age of 90, and more than 16,000 are over 100. And while on average a man turning 65 in 2023 could expect to make it to just under the age of 85 and a woman to 87 and a half, there will be thousands who beat the odds and live much longer.
“As more people are living into their 90s, we all need to consider how we would pay for three decades or longer in retirement. As early as possible, it’s worth using a pension calculator to see what you may be able to build by retirement and the income you’re likely to be able to take from it. If you need to take more, it’s worth considering how long you might reasonably expect your pot to last. This process will reveal whether you need to consider boosting your pension contributions.
How you take retirement income matters
“One way to be certain a pension drawdown pot lasts for life is to take just the natural yield from your investments. This is where you take the income from dividends produced by your investments, so you don’t eat into the capital itself. This means the pot continues to grow and has the potential to keep up with inflation. You will need a substantial pot, with enough savings and investments elsewhere to give you flexibility over how much income you can take, but it’s a great way not only to protect an income for life, but also to give you flexibility if you need to dip into the pot for care needs.
“Most of these calculators will give you the option of factoring in the state pension. It’s worth doing the calculations both with and without, to see where you stand. Nobody is suggesting the state pension will disappear altogether in the near future, but when you’re forecasting decades ahead, it pays to bear in mind that no state benefits are ever written in stone.
“If you opt for an annuity, you will have an income for life, but it’s vital to consider inflation. Over three decades it can have a dramatic impact on the spending power of your income. Prices have more than doubled in the past 30 years, so you need to understand the impact on your quality of life. You can opt for an inflation-linked annuity to overcome this, but you need to accept that the initial income will be much lower.
“Taking the annuity route offers certainty, but it removes flexibility over how much income you can take, so you also need to think about how you would cover the cost of any care. It’s one reason why people often combine annuities and drawdown, either at the same time or at different stages of life.”