When the Richest Man in the World Tells You to Stop Saving for Retirement

I recently came across a few headlines about Elon Musk suggesting that saving for retirement may not even matter anymore because of artificial intelligence.

I will admit, I found that a little ironic. The richest person in the world telling everyone else to stop saving for the future.

That observation aside, it raises a bigger questions worth sitting with.

Is AI real? Yes.

Will it change jobs and industries? Almost certainly.

Does that mean everything we know about money, work, and planning suddenly becomes irrelevant? I am not convinced.

This is strictly my opinion, but I think it is easy to jump too far ahead of where we actually are.

The other day, I took my son to the orthodontist. As he was laying there getting new rubber bands adjusted, it hit me how many jobs simply are not going away anytime soon. Hands-on work. Human interaction. Judgment. Reassurance. Trust.

Even in my own profession, I fully expect AI to change how we work. But I do not believe it eliminates the need for human perspective or emotional comfort. We have already seen a version of this play out. Robo-advisors were once expected to replace human advisors. Instead, they revealed something important. When decisions feel personal, emotional, or uncertain, people still want a human involved.

Money decisions fall squarely into that category.

There is also a growing conversation about what a future economy might look like. Some point to ideas like universal basic income or automation-driven support systems. Maybe something like that emerges someday. Maybe it does not.

Even if it does, I do not see money going away.

What feels more realistic to me is a more layered system. A baseline level of support for some, with additional opportunity and flexibility for those who have savings, assets, and options. Savings still create choices. Spending power still matters. The ability to say yes or no still matters.

That is why I struggle with the idea that we should stop planning today based on what we think might happen tomorrow.

I explored a similar theme in a previous article, What’s the Point of Planning Anyway?, where I wrote about how easy it is to slip into a kind of financial nihilism when the world feels overwhelming. Wars, recessions, pandemics, political chaos. Every generation gets its own version of “this time feels different.”

The temptation is always the same. If the future feels uncertain enough, maybe planning is pointless. I did not believe that then, and I do not believe it now, even as AI reshapes the conversation in new ways.

Legislation can change. Cultural attitudes can shift. Technology often moves faster than policy, until it does not.

And throughout all of that, people still have bills, families, goals, and unexpected turns in life.

So my takeaway is not to overhaul everything because of AI headlines. It is much simpler than that.

Focus on what you can control right now. Plan with the information we actually have today. Stay flexible enough to adapt later.

AI will change things. It already is. But uncertainty has always been part of planning.

Preparing for the future, even an imperfectly understood one, still beats hoping everything works itself out.