Last week, I came across a startling calculation tool by GrowthX that made me pause. It estimates how many working hours AI will likely eliminate from your career—not decades from now, but within your working lifetime.
I entered my age. The number that appeared: 82,000 hours.
Here’s the link in case you want to check how many years AI could cut from your career.
That’s roughly 10 years of full-time work that AI could compress, automate, or render obsolete before I reach the traditionally “retirement age.”
But here’s the shocking part: this AI replacement is already in motion. Just this week, Accenture laid off 11,000 employees as a part of its AI transition. And the implications for how we think about retirement, wealth creation, and financial security are profound.
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Create Wealth newsletter, where we explore a reality most wealth creators aren’t yet accounting for: you might work fewer years than you planned, but you’ll almost certainly need to fund far more years than your parents did.
In this edition, we’ll cover:
- The AI compression effect: Why your career timeline is shrinking
- The longevity paradox: Living longer with less earning time
- The new retirement math: 30 years to fund, not 15
- Healthcare inflation: The silent wealth destroyer
- Financial resilience in the age of AI: What actually works
Let’s begin.
The AI compression effect: Your career timeline is shrinking
For decades, retirement planning followed a predictable formula: work from 25 to 60-65, then fund 15-20 years of retirement. The math was straightforward. The assumptions held.
Not anymore.
The data is stark and immediate. India’s largest private sector employer, Tata Consultancy Services, cut more than 12,000 jobs in a single announcement. Over 3,600 employees were laid off by Indian startups in just the first five months of 2025, driven by automation.
This isn’t about technology replacing blue-collar work anymore. Projections suggest that 40-50% of current white-collar jobs in India may disappear due to AI-driven automation.
Take a look below at the shocking list of % of tasks AI can do for various professions and I’m sure you can see how working professionals are going to be deeply affected.
But here’s what makes this moment different from previous technological disruptions: the speed and the scope.
When manufacturing jobs were automated in the past, displacement happened over decades. Workers could retrain. New sectors absorbed the surplus. The adjustment period was gradual.
AI compression is happening in years, not decades.
And it’s targeting knowledge work—the very segment that India’s professional class has built wealth upon.
What does this mean for your retirement planning?
The traditional assumption that you’ll work until 60-65 is becoming obsolete. You might find yourself involuntarily retired at 55—or even earlier—not because you want to, but because your role has been automated, restructured, or redefined beyond recognition.
That’s 5-10 years of prime earning (and compounding) time you may not have.
The longevity paradox: Living longer with less earning time
While AI is compressing your earning years, medical science is extending your living years.
India’s life expectancy reached approximately 70.6 years in 2024. But that’s just the beginning. Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) for females is projected to increase from 61.4 years in 2022 to 65.9 years by 2050, while for males it will rise from 60.8 years to 65.5 years.
The population of people aged 80+ years in India is projected to grow at a rate of around 279% between 2022 and 2050.
If you look at the worldwide numbers too, we can see a looming retirement crisis. This comes with its own problems, something we can delve into, in another edition perhaps.
Think about what this means: You’re likely to live longer than any previous generation in your family. But you might also stop earning earlier than they did.
This creates a funding gap that most retirement calculators don’t account for.
The old model assumed:
- Work from 25-60 (35 years of earning)
- Retire from 60-75 (15 years of expenses)
- Funding ratio: 2.3 years of work for every 1 year of retirement
The new reality:
- Work from 25-55 (30 years of earning, maybe less)
- Retire from 55-85 (30 years of expenses, possibly more)
- Funding ratio: 1 year of work for every 1 year of retirement
You need to fund twice as many years with fewer earning years. That’s a complete recalibration of retirement math.
The new retirement math: Why 30 years is the new baseline
Let me walk you through what this actually means in rupee terms.
Consider a typical affluent professional in Mumbai:
- Current age: 40
- Current annual expenses: ₹40 lakh (including rent, EMIs, children’s education, vacations, and lifestyle costs)
- Expected retirement age (traditional): 60
- Expected retirement age (AI-adjusted): 55
- Life expectancy: 85
Traditional retirement planning (work until 60):
- Years to retirement: 20
- Years in retirement: 25
- Total retirement corpus needed (at 6% inflation): ₹23-27 crore
- Annual savings required: ₹47-53 lakh
AI-adjusted retirement planning (work until 55):
- Years to retirement: 15
- Years in retirement: 30
- Total retirement corpus needed (at 6% inflation): ₹30-35 crore
- Annual savings required: ₹73-87 lakh
That’s a 30-40% increase in the corpus requirement, with 25% less time to build it.
And we haven’t even factored in healthcare inflation yet.
Healthcare inflation: The silent wealth destroyer
While general inflation in India has been moderating, healthcare costs tell a different story.
As of September 2024, the medical inflation rate in India stood at 14%, the highest rate among Asian countries including China.
To put this in perspective: at 14% annual inflation, healthcare costs double every 5 years.
If a bypass surgery costs ₹10 lakh today, it will cost:
- ₹20 lakh in 5 years
- ₹40 lakh in 10 years
- ₹80 lakh in 15 years
- ₹1.6 crore in 20 years
Cancer treatments now cost 5-10 times more than conventional chemotherapy due to immunotherapy and targeted therapies, and COVID-19 demonstrated how quickly costs can spike, with ICU charges reaching ₹50-75,000 per day and bills of ₹15-20 lakh becoming common.
Now layer this onto an already-extended retirement timeline.
If you retire at 55 and live until 85, you’re looking at 30 years of healthcare expenses that compound at 14% annually. The healthcare portion of your retirement corpus alone could require ₹15-20 crore in today’s terms—before you account for lifestyle expenses.
While this may sound scary, it is an unfortunate reality.
Financial resilience in the age of AI: What actually works
So what do you do when both your earning timeline and retirement timeline are moving in the wrong direction?
The answer isn’t to panic. It’s to recalibrate—systematically and immediately.
Here’s what financial resilience looks like in this new reality:
1. Redefine your retirement age—now
Stop planning for retirement at 60. Start planning for involuntary career transitions at 55—or even 50.
This doesn’t mean you’ll stop working. It means you need to be financially independent enough that work becomes optional, not mandatory.
The goal: Build a corpus that can sustain you from 50-85, even if active income drops significantly after 55.
2. Front-load your savings
Traditional retirement planning assumes steady savings throughout your career. AI compression requires front-loading.
Your 30s and 40s are now your critical wealth-building decades. By 45, you should ideally have:
- 8-10x your annual expenses in investment portfolios
- Healthcare coverage of at least ₹1-2 crore (and increasing annually)
- At least 1-2 diversified income streams beyond salary
The compounding you get from aggressive savings in your 30s and 40s is what will carry you through extended retirement in your 70s and 80s.
3. Healthcare planning cannot be deferred
Healthcare planning is a wealth preservation strategy.
Key moves:
- Don’t rely only on your corporate insurance
- Super top-up health insurance beyond basic coverage
- International medical coverage for complex treatments
- Long-term care insurance (still nascent in India, but worth tracking)
- Annual health checks that go beyond routine tests—comprehensive metabolic panels, genetic screening, and preventive diagnostics
Think of healthcare planning as portfolio insurance. You’re not hoping to use it. You’re hoping it protects your corpus from major erosion.
4. Build skill resilience, not job security
AI might automate your current role. But it won’t automate judgment, relationship-building, and strategic thinking.
The professionals thriving post-55 will be those who’ve built:
- Advisory capabilities: Moving from execution to counsel
- Network capital: Relationships that create opportunities
- Platform independence: Skills that translate across industries
- Creator mindset: Ability to monetize expertise directly
Your career strategy from here should focus on becoming less replaceable, not just more skilled.
5. Portfolio construction for longevity
Your investment portfolio needs to work for 30-35 years post-retirement. That requires a different asset allocation than traditional retirement planning.
Key principles:
- Higher equity allocation even post-50(You can gradually decrease the equity allocation as per the changes in your risk appetite and life circumstances)
- Diversify your investments: Consider diversifying outside of equity – eg – REITs, gold, bonds
- Withdrawal rate: Keep in mind your cash flow requirements annually while planning your liquidity and withdrawals.
- Always keep an emergency fund: Atleast 12 months of your annual expense and monitor any major changes closely.
The goal isn’t just capital preservation. It’s capital appreciation throughout retirement to keep pace with healthcare inflation and longevity.
6. Multiple income streams aren’t optional
Relying on a single income source—salary—is the riskiest position in an AI-compressed career landscape.
Build redundancy:
- Consulting/advisory income from your domain expertise
- Investment income from diversified portfolios
- Passive income from real estate or digital assets
- Board positions or fractional executive roles
Each income stream doesn’t need to be large. But collectively, they create resilience if any single source gets disrupted.
The psychological shift: From optimisation to resilience
Here’s what I’ve observed working with hundreds of wealth creators: The hardest part of this recalibration isn’t financial. It’s psychological.
For decades, we’ve been conditioned to optimise—maximising returns, minimising taxes, squeezing every basis point of alpha from our portfolios.
That optimisation mindset served us well in stable, predictable environments.
But AI compression + longevity extension creates fundamental uncertainty. And in uncertain environments, resilience matters more than optimisation.
Resilience means:
- Building larger safety buffers (even if it “costs” you in potential returns)
- Accepting lower withdrawal rates (even if the math says you could go higher)
- Maintaining more liquidity (even if it drags on portfolio performance)
- Over-insuring (even if premiums feel expensive)
These moves won’t maximise your wealth. But they’ll protect your peace of mind—which, over 30 years of retirement, might be the most valuable asset of all.
In summary
The 80,000-hour blind spot
When I saw that 82,000-hour calculation, what struck me wasn’t just the number. It was the realisation that most professionals haven’t accounted for it.
They’re still planning as if:
- They’ll work until 60-65
- They’ll retire for 15-20 years
- Healthcare costs will track general inflation
- Their current skillset will remain relevant
None of these assumptions hold anymore.
The uncomfortable truth: You’re likely going to work fewer years than you planned, live longer than you expected, and face healthcare costs that compound faster than your investments.
But here’s the opportunity: Very few people are adjusting their planning yet. Which means those who recalibrate now—who front-load savings, build skill resilience, over-insure on healthcare, and construct portfolios for 30+ year horizons—will have a meaningful advantage.
The question isn’t whether retirement math is changing. It’s whether you’re changing your plan to match it.
Because in an age where AI is compressing career timelines and longevity is extending life timelines, managing your money has never mattered more.
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