Centenarians Are Having A Moment.

There has been a lot of talk about centenarians so far in 2025. If you don’t know, centenarians are people living past age 100 and there has been an uptick in the chatter about them in recent months. 

What kicked all the frenzy up was when President Trump and Elon Musk made some statements about the tens of millions of dead people over 100 that are still collecting Social Security.

This triggered the google searching and fact checking that immediately follows a claim like this. Heck, I did! 

I like this article by the Associated Press about the situation if you want to have a look. 

https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased-false-claims-doge-ed2885f5769f368853ac3615b4852cf7

The purpose of this Grimm News is not to fact check but to tell you about the questions I had about centenarians in the US. 

First, how many 100 year olds are there? That could be a clue to the fact checking, but I am more conserned with the cost of aging and life expectancy changes. According to census data about 0.03% of the population or 100,000 people are 100 or over. I was fortunate to have a centenarian in my family with my great-grandmother. 

What I found interesting about the census data centers around where they see the number of centenarians going over the next couple decades. It is expected for that number to triple by the year 2054 and only going higher. This is part of my concern for the future around retirement and the potential problems a very long life can have financially. 

Complicating this is who will be 100 around 2054. It is the baby boomer generation with the subsequent generations (their children) being older and at or near retirement age. 

Is part of your retirement planning caring for your centenarian parents? Might be time to add that to the list.  

There is also added concern for females when looking at this equation of aging in America for one simple reason - they live longer. Almost 80% of centenarians are female. And it is estimated that over ⅔ of the almost half million centenarians in 2054 will be female. 

For more information on this, check out this Pew Research article. 

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/09/us-centenarian-population-is-projected-to-quadruple-over-the-next-30-years/#:~:text=Centenarians%20currently%20make%20up%20just,to%20reach%200.1%25%20in%202054.

As always, if you come across a financially related article you’d like to send my way please do! 

Best place to send them is to me.

More next time!

Jonathan