Expiry Date Never Why Retirement Is the Wrong Model for a 100-Year Life

We talk about “50 plus” as if it’s a single category. It isn’t. As Victoria Tomlinson, entrepreneur, former chair, and author of the new book Expiry Date Never , puts it bluntly: “We’ve got this filing cabinet with all these categories up to 50, and then you just lump everybody 50 plus, which is 66 years, into one box. It’s complete nonsense. You’re assuming everybody’s old.”

Tomlinson, 70, is a case study for her own argument. She has run her own business for 36 years, built a tech platform, and says plainly: “I out-energize most people half my age.” Her point isn’t vanity, it’s reality and overlooked across many part of society including work and economy. For decades, the work and life choices were built around the concept of working for 40 – 50 years followed by retirement with income levels to sustain different stages of aging. This model is truly broken both in terms of health, social and financial elements.

Expiry Date Never: Age is the New Superpower , co-written by Tomlinson with Louise Ballard and published by Pearson in September 2026, makes the case that people over 50 are being pushed out of income, relevance and opportunity years before they are ready, a cost to businesses, individuals and society alike. The book argues that demographics, AI, and workplace and policy design are colliding to create both a crisis and an opportunity, and makes the case that the very concept of retirement will not exist in 100 years

For decades, the career “finish line” was designed around men, a linear climb followed by a fixed exit. When women fought for board parity and leadership representation, many adopted the same model as this represented career success. But in reality this trajectory was starting to disintegrate. Tomlinson has watched this play out inside the professional services firms she now advises: “Everybody followed this a bit like lemmings, and the problem is right now, because there’s so much transition and turbulence, no one knows what aging well looks like beyond retirement.”

The result is a generation, men and women alike who are reaching a career milestone built for a shorter life than the one they’re actually going to live, with no template for what comes next.

The Numbers Behind the Nonsense

These insights are not anecdotal for Tomlinson. Her firm Next-Up Limited has evaluated more than 650 partners at major professional services firms. The data contradicts assumptions that senior professionals want to quietly exit. They have skills, expertise and experience they want to continue to use, and as the traditional NED route becomes disrupted they need to find different ways to engage with work. Tomlinson’s response is deliberately unsentimental and honest.

“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to join the real world. It used to be golf or non-exec, didn’t it? They know they want more than just filling time, but they don’t know what it looks like.”

The Cost of Losing Purpose

Underneath the practical planning, Tomlinson is tracking something more serious, a pattern she believes is under-researched: professionals who lose their sense of purpose in the transition out of demanding careers. Research identifies how recently retired individuals experienced high levels of psychological distress. The crisis occurs as individuals loosing their sense of identity and structured environment that has dominated their lives for decades. This is described as the Identity Gap, as individuals have to move from one mode to the next. The risk of mental health deterioration is particularly acute for high-achievers and senior leaders who are often in a cycle of burnout focusing on the next achievement. When retirement looms ahead the horizon can seem bleak and frankly depressing. Channeling deep expertise into non-profit boards, volunteerism, or part-time consulting bridges this void, improving psychological well-being.

If there’s a single word Tomlinson keeps returning to, it’s agency. Reminding individuals who have been caught in the corporate wheel they have choices beyond the stereotypical retirement story. Without strong representation of diverse choices it can be easy to assume choices are limited, but in fact Tomlinson is seeing the opposite, where clients are building second acts from completely different and unrelated opportunities. One example she cites: a former partner, who overcame a childhood stammering went on to launch a global charity supporting others who stammer. “He said, ‘All my experience has led me to this, I know how to set something up, I know how to influence, I know how to bring people together.’ It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it’s the most rewarding.”

Starting up initiatives that drive social change and working with dynamic start ups is a place where longevity is already normalised. Research is starting to consistently to show start ups launched by older entrepreneurs are twice as likely to be successful . The magic number is higher than you would think, fifty years is the sweet spot and likely to keep rising. Tomlinson argues entrepreneurship is perfectly aligned with longevity because nobody expects a fixed exit. “Entrepreneurship is easy because actually, if you’re going to be successful and have a good life, you have a lot of challenges”. Challenge, not comfort is what keeps people relevant.

Tomlinson’s sharpest critique is aimed at employers and policymakers, not individuals. Governments have raised retirement ages to reduce pension liabilities, she argues, without any corresponding push for employers to actually retain older workers, resulting in a wider schism between when people stop earning and when their savings run out. “There is no contract for employers to have to employ,” she says. “Age discrimination is different from saying we expect you to employ people of all ages. There’s no social contract there.”

Her proposed fix is concrete and data driven. Governments should publish hiring, retention, and redundancy data, classified by data beyond 60+, broken down by decades; 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Age-disaggegrated data provides the necessary nuances to challenge assumptions everyone over the age of 60 is invisible and irrelevant.

A Question Every Economy Will Eventually Ask

The urgency of this conversation depends heavily on where you sit. In aging societies, the reckoning has already started, Tomlinson points to Japan, where visible vitality into extreme old age is unremarkable. In younger, fast-growing markets, the conversation is starting to emerge, particularly economies dominated by family offices and culturally have strong collectivist and extended family-based values. Globally, demographic transitions move faster than institutions expect, and policy makers are asking the question, “what does a working life look like when it can span 60-plus years?”.

Tomlinson’s closing provocation, drawn from her book, reframes the entire debate: “I think in 100 years, our great grandchildren will say, ‘What was retirement?’ It’s so out of date. It’s no longer fit for purpose.”