I am sure this is a scary headline. Damn pretty scary.

Old age has various implications – and I am not here to argue a) whether we will live that long and / or b) why this is likely to happen.

Let us see what it means for YOU youngsters who are now under 30 years of age (those born after 1985)…

1. You will work till your age of 50 or 52. At that age there will be tremendous pressure from people much younger wanting to take your place. Only exception is if you are an excellent person in your field, and it is an area where fresh talent cannot easily replace somebody with 15 years experience!

2. You will hold 3-4 jobs and the connection between the jobs may not be much. Let us say you qualify as a MBA in finance. You join a SOFTWARE company in sales, and start selling software. You are doing well and are interacting with the BFSI space. Suddenly you move to becoming a Business Analyst. Excellent. Project Manager. Then suddenly you are sucked into Life Insurance Sales. 5 years on…you moved to managing high end Portfolio Management Clients. From there to Fund Management and Relationship Management for a Family Office. This is the real life story of a person I know. Seriously the previous job DID NOT prepare you for your next job!!

3. You will be in complicated relationships: Hopefully Corporate India will also wake up about their duties to women. If you are a man, be ready for increased responsibility while parenting. If you are a girl be ready for a big dent in your career – in terms of money, status, and being able to look after the baby. It is not going to be easy.

4. You will quit one job, one job will sack you, one company will shut down, one company CEO will like you but the COO will want your blood, you will leave one AMAZING job because you did not want to leave Mumbai to go to Gurgaon, …be ready for an uncertain future.

5. Amidst all this you need to marry, procreate, buy a house, see the world, look after your aging parents, put up with boss’s tantrums, servant’s tantrums, and teenage kids too!

6. While you are at it create a corpus of a few crores to see you through your retired life.

7. Most important thing I want you to do? Look after your health, relax, and remember somebody out there loves you immaterial of who you are, what you are doing, why you are like that, how rich you are. etc. etc. REMEMBER to keep in touch with them.