Ingram's July 2026

by Dennis Boone Longer lives are reshaping work, wealth and even the future of Kansas City’s wealth-management sector. THE NEW RETIREMENT ECONOMY

force disruption. For commercial real estate developers, it means shifting demand. For hospitals and health sys tems, it means rapidly growing service needs. For financial advisers, it means helping clients navigate a retirement that may last 30 years instead of 10 or 15. And for business owners, it raises a question that often receives less atten tion than it deserves: Who takes over when the founder leaves? The retirement story of 2026 is therefore not primarily about retirees. It is about everyone else. The Work-Force Question For much of the past two decades, economic development discussions focused on attracting jobs. Today, many employers would settle for finding qualified, engaged workers, period. The retirement wave is one reason why. Across the country, labor-force par ticipation has been pulled downward by the growing number of retirees

matically as we’ve drifted much more toward a service-based economy than a hard-labor one. And that changes what someone is going to need in retire ment—financially, and for their emo tional livelihood.” That shift is visible across the coun try, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in regions like Kansas City, where an aging population intersects with a labor market already struggling to replace experienced workers. Demographers have spent years warning about the arrival of the Baby Boom generation into retirement. Now the wave is here. More than 11,000 Americans a day are crossing age 65, and by 2031 every member of the Baby Boom generation will be at least that age. The percentage of Americans over 65 continues to climb and is projected to exceed one-fifth of the population within the next decade. The implications reach far beyond retirement accounts. For employers, retirement increasingly means work

When Ingram’s first began its annual examination of retirement-planning trends in 2011—as the first Baby Boomers turned 65—the conversation revolved around accumulation: How much should you save? What percent age should be in stocks? Would Social Security remain solvent? Could a nest egg survive a market correction? Those questions remain important 15 years later, as the tail end of that demographic tidal wave dissipates. But they no longer define retirement. Today, retirement has become some thing much larger than a financial milestone. It is increasingly an eco nomic force—one that influences labor markets, health-care systems, housing demand, philanthropy, business owner ship and wealth management itself. “The trend line is constantly chang ing,” said Jamie Battmer, chief invest ment officer for Creative Planning, the Overland Park-based wealth-manage ment giant. “The traditional concepts around retirement have changed dra

53

I ngr am ’ s

Ingrams.com

July 2026