Karen Andres

Director of Lifelong Saving and Investing at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, where she works on policy and market changes to help more Americans save, invest, and build wealth. She is a co-founder of the Collaborative for Equitable Retirement Savings and a frequent speaker on retirement, investing, and household financial security.

A 30-Year Retirement Requires Income, Not Just Savings

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Karen Andres, Allison Schrager, Jaime Magyera, Thasunda Duckett and Ida Rademacher framed longer lifespans as an affordability problem for a retirement system still built around shorter lives, uneven workplace access and account balances rather than dependable income. Their central argument was that a 100-year life requires more than urging households to save more: plans must start earlier, use automatic defaults, preserve liquidity, widen access and embed guaranteed income before retirement.

The Aspen InstituteJun 30, 202619 min read