Your Retirement Story: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Planning
Carroll Golden - Retirement Strategist
In my blog, Your Retirement Story: What the New Tax Law Means for You, we explored how new tax laws can shape your retirement strategy. In the following blog, Your Retirement Story: What Business Owners Need to Know About the New Tax Law, we looked at how business owners face unique challenges and opportunities in planning for succession and retirement security.
Now we turn to a force moving so fast that legislation and regulations aren’t keeping up: Artificial Intelligence (AI). You should question how artificial intelligence can personalize your retirement—and what guardrails you must demand.
Unlike tax laws that arrive with thousands of pages of detail, AI is advancing without clear rules, regulations, or tax incentives. It is a frontier with enormous promise—and uncharted risks.
James Cameron put it bluntly: “Fear is not an option.” Robert Ricigliano adds, “Fear creates actors, not problem-solvers.” Fear of AI—job loss, misuse, being left behind—is natural. But fear alone won’t shape a strong retirement strategy—only thoughtful planning can turn uncertainty into retirement security.
A sobering backdrop: the retirement gap we’re facing
The global context is stark. The World Economic Forum estimates a $400 trillion retirement savings gap by 2050. Demographics are pushing traditional systems to their limits: the dependency ratio (workers per retiree) is falling worldwide, straining pay-as-you-go pensions and shifting heavier burdens to younger generations. Closer to home, analyses show the average American retiree may outlive their savings by 8–10 years. Compounding the problem: persistent gaps in financial literacy—one reason I suggested in my book, Leading in the New Retirement Era, that financial firms create Longevity Literacy Gatherings to help families learn, talk, and plan across generations.
That’s the reality AI is walking into: a retirement system under pressure, households uncertain, and a policy vacuum around how AI should be used.
Where AI already lives in your financial life
AI is no longer experimental—it's embedded across financial services:
Risk assessment & management: Models that evaluate credit, market, and operational risks with far greater sensitivity than traditional statistics.
Fraud detection & prevention: Machine learning that spots unusual patterns and adapts as schemes evolve.
Process automation: RPA and intelligent document processing that streamlines back-office work and reduces errors.
Customer engagement: Virtual assistants and personalization engines that respond in real time.
Investment management: Algorithmic trading, portfolio optimization, and robo-advisory.
For retirement planning, the real promise is personalization—moving beyond one-size-fits-all rules of thumb.
How AI can personalize retirement planning (and why that matters)
Holistic financial analysis: Integrates accounts, assets, debts, insurance, and potential inheritances into a single, evolving picture.
Behavioral profiling: Learns from your actual decisions—risk taking, spending patterns, saving habits—rather than just questionnaires.
Life-expectancy modeling: Incorporates health status, family history, and lifestyle to better match income strategies to your longevity.
Goal prioritization: Balances retirement security with competing goals (children’s education, travel, caregiving) based on stated and revealed preferences.
Health–wealth integration: The most transformative shift—linking healthcare and financial planning so you can plan for what you’ll spend.
AI-enabled health–wealth integration
Platforms can now connect health data with financial planning to project personalized healthcare costs across retirement, optimize Medicare and supplemental coverage, assess long-term care needs, and refine life-expectancy inputs. When households see personalized healthcare costs within their plan, average saving rates jump—evidence suggests by more than twenty percent for people who previously underestimated those costs. The takeaway: visibility changes behavior.
Ethical considerations and challenges you should insist on
If AI is going to help—not harm—your retirement story, these guardrails matter. Use them as questions for any provider or advisor who’s bringing AI into your planning.
1) Data privacy and security
Sensitive data handling: Retirement planning uses your most private details—income, health, family, long-term goals. Expect protection that goes beyond minimum requirements.
Data ownership: You should have transparency and portability—the ability to take your data with you.
Informed consent: Because AI is complex, consent should be layered and granular (you choose what’s used, and how).
Security: Look for zero-trust architectures, continuous authentication, and behavioral biometrics—AI planning platforms are prime targets.
Ask: What data do you collect? Who can see it? Can I revoke or port it? What security standards do you meet?
2) Algorithmic bias and fairness
Training-data bias: Historical data can encode inequities and we know we all have those in our history; responsible teams use bias testing and counterfactuals to find and fix it.
Proxy discrimination: Even without protected attributes, correlated variables (correlated variables are two or more variables whose values tend to change together in a predictable way. A positive correlation means they increase and decrease together, while a negative correlation means one increases as the other decreases) can discriminate; advanced teams practice “fairness through awareness.”
Differential accuracy: Quality must be tested across groups, not just overall averages.
Transparency: Favor explainable AI—clear rationales for recommendations.
Ask: How do you test for bias? Can you explain the recommendations? What is a subgroup? Do you test using subgroups, and what’s the accuracy by subgroup? If they can’t explain it in layman’s language, you can understand, then move on.
3) The digital divide and access inequities
Digital literacy: Provide human support—coaching, workshops, or “digital ambassadors.”
Language & culture: Multiple languages and as we have often said, culturally aware planning concepts matter.
Disability access: Screen-reader optimization, voice control, and simplified modes.
Ask: How do you support clients with limited tech access or special needs?
4) Human–AI collaboration and oversight
Appropriate autonomy: High-stakes decisions should keep a human-in-the-loop.
Advisor augmentation vs. replacement: The best models AI + human judgment.
Explanation requirements: You deserve plain-English explanations.
Ask: What stays automated? When do you, as my advisor, intervene? Who is accountable- you, me and AI? How does that work?
5) Regulatory compliance and evolution
Principles vs. rules: Expect to see changes due to regulations and evolving standards.
Audit trails: Systems or frameworks used should track and record the history of how a decision was made. It acts as an audit trail for a decision, detailing all the data, logic, rules, and agents (human or AI) involved in reaching a specific conclusion or planning decisions.
Ask: How and when do you improve compliance with new regulations or legislation? Can you audit specific decisions in my plan?
What the near future may bring (and how it affects you)
1–3 years (near-term):
Multimodal planning experiences (voice + chat + visuals) that make complex trade-offs easier to understand.
Edge AI for more privacy and offline resilience.
Federated learning that trains models without centralizing sensitive data.
Affective computing that detects retirement anxiety and reduces avoidance behaviors.
RegTech “by design”—compliance embedded into development.
3–7 years (medium-term):
Generalized financial AI coordinating retirement, education, healthcare, and day-to-day budgeting.
Decentralized retirement platforms with user-controlled data and more portable benefits.
AI–human planning teams with specialized roles.
Advanced longevity prediction that materially improves planning horizons.
Personalized retirement products (mass-customized annuities, LTC solutions).
7–15 years (long-term, directional):
More generalized AI that supports whole-life design beyond traditional retirement.
Brain–computer interfaces for intuitive scenario exploration.
Autonomous financial agents that adjust plans continuously.
Productivity shifts that could reimagine retirement timing and structure.
Toward global standards improving portability and equity.
So…what should you do now?
Even without AI-specific tax incentives or finalized rules, you can act:
Use AI to find savings—then fund your future.
Adopt vetted AI tools that boost business efficiency (or personal productivity) and redirect the gains into retirement savings. Small, steady moves compound.Integrate health into wealth.
Include personalized healthcare cost projections and coverage choices in your plan. If you can see it, you can plan for it.Demand ethics by design.
Choose providers who prove privacy, fairness, explainability, accessibility, and clear human oversight.Hold Longevity Literacy Gatherings.
Bring family into the conversation. Your plan is personal—but never private. AI won’t bridge family misalignment; dialogue will.Work with a professional who’s fluent in AI.
You want an advisor who can evaluate tools, test assumptions, and keep your plan flexible as tech and rules evolve.
Conclusion: lead your retirement story—don’t let the future write it for you
A massive savings gap, longer lives, rising healthcare costs, and a thinning worker-to-retiree ratio make the old retirement playbook obsolete. AI won’t magically close the gap—but used wisely, it can personalize, illuminate, and accelerate the steps that do.
Cameron’s call for boldness and Ricigliano’s reminder about fear point to the same truth: courage + strategy beat anxiety. Bring AI into your plan with clear ethics, human oversight, and family dialogue—and make it work for your life, not just your numbers.
Because just as you didn’t grow up in isolation, you won’t retire in isolation. The choices you make today will ripple through your business, your family, and your future.
📘 This blog builds on themes from my book, Leading in a New Retirement Era: How to Lead, Adapt, and Win in an AI-Driven World. It’s not about creating a one-size-fits-all retirement—it’s about understanding your influences, your finances, and your future so your plan is truly yours.
Disclaimer: This material does not constitute tax, legal, investment, or accounting advice and is not intended for use by a taxpayer for the purposes of avoiding any IRS penalty. Comments on taxation are based on tax law current as of the time this article was produced.
