"Temporary" Works for Markets. Not for People.

The most dangerous word in retirement planning today may be "temporary."

Policymakers turn to it when prices rise. Markets rely on it. Analysts repeat it on cue. The current conflict involving Iran has already driven energy prices higher, and the reassurances have come as scheduled: relief is on the way, conditions will return to normal, and the disruption is only temporary.

That framing may hold in the language of markets. It holds less well when you are standing in a kitchen, reading a bill. In markets, time is the solution. In retirement, time is the constraint.

This Isn't a Price Spike. It's a Capacity Problem.

When energy infrastructure is damaged, pipelines are offline, LNG facilities are disrupted, shipping lanes are uncertain, and the issue stops being price and becomes capacity. And capacity, once lost, does not snap back on command. Repairs take time. Supply chains must be reconfigured. Some analysts suggest that restoring key parts of the global energy infrastructure could take years, not months.

Two years. Maybe five.

In economic terms, that's temporary. In retirement, it's something entirely different. For someone in their late seventies or early eighties, a two-year period isn't just a small margin. It's a significant portion of what remains—years that can't be made up by higher earnings, delayed withdrawals, or the simple luxury of time that youth almost takes for granted.

Five Years. Five Shocks. No Recovery Time Between Them

Here's what sets this moment apart from previous ones also called temporary, short-term, or transitory.

Consider the last five years.

• 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Disrupted not only markets but the timing of retirement itself. Millions were pushed out of the workforce earlier than planned, not by choice, but by circumstance. The retirement clock started before anyone was ready.
• 2021-2022 Supply chain collapse. Systems that were invisible when they worked became impossible to ignore when they didn't. A factory shutdown in one country raised the price of appliances, cars, and groceries in another. Container ships lined up off the coast of California were not just a news item; they demonstrated the fragility of what most of us take for granted: products will always be there, on demand. Costs that were supposed to be temporary became a new baseline.
• 2021-2023 Inflation surge. Famously called "transitory." It wasn't. For retirees already drawing down savings, the gap between what the models projected and what prices actually did was not an abstract concept. It was the difference between their plan and reality. Many retirees drew down savings faster than any projection had anticipated.
• 2022-2023 Russia-Ukraine conflict. Energy and food prices surged. The shock lingered far longer than forecasters predicted. European energy markets were restructured. Global grain supplies were disrupted. The effects traveled quietly through the cost of nearly everything.
• 2026 US-Iran conflict. Energy markets volatile, inflation pressures renewed. Less than a month in, the disruption is already being described as temporary.

The shocks are beginning to stack.

Each event, considered alone, might have been absorbed. But that is no longer how they are arriving. One after another, with barely a pause between them, these shocks have done something more consequential than raise prices or rattle markets.

They have altered the rhythm of retirement itself. They are eroding decades-old assumptions about what it means to be prepared for retirement.

The glide path that retirement planning was built on, gradual, recoverable, punctuated by the occasional bump, is increasingly difficult to find. And the planning model that assumed it would always be there has not caught up with a world that no longer cooperates.

Energy Costs in Your Gas Tank and Refrigerator

Energy rarely appears as a headline risk in retirement planning conversations. It shows up quietly, as a utility line item. But energy is not merely a utility. It is embedded in nearly everything: heating, cooling, transportation, food production, the delivery services that older adults increasingly depend upon, the cost structure of care itself.

The reach extends further than the gas pump. Nearly 49% of the world's urea supply, essential to fertilizer production, originates in the Middle East. Within weeks of the conflict, urea prices jumped 30%. As one food industry analyst put it: "Your lettuce is a war casualty."

When energy prices move, they carry other prices with them. George is not simply paying more to heat his home.

He is indirectly paying more for much of what he consumes.

Recent reports suggest that rising energy costs are already reshaping the budgets of millions of households. For those on fixed incomes, the margin for adjustment is narrow. The thermostat goes down. Travel is postponed. Small decisions accumulate quietly until they are no longer small, they are the shape of retirement.

Retirement Planning Needs a Wider Lens

The retirement planning industry has built careful models for inflation, market volatility, longevity, and health events. These models are not wrong. They are, however, designed for a world that assumed disruptions would be episodic, sharp, painful, and ultimately resolved.

Retirement planning needs a wider lens — one that accounts not just for market volatility, health events, and longevity, but for a world where disruptions are no longer occasional. They punctuate the new retirement landscape.

Retirement planning can no longer be framed solely as a question of how much to save or how to invest. It must also account for how to live in a world where stability is less certain, shocks arrive in close succession, and the systems that underpin daily life — energy, supply chains, and healthcare — are more exposed to disruption than the standard retirement playbook assumed.

Structural preparedness means examining the physical infrastructure of your retirement, not just the financial one. How dependent are you on a car in a world where driving may become difficult or costly? How exposed is your home to volatile energy costs, and how hard would it be to reduce that exposure? How far are you from the healthcare you will eventually need, not the healthcare you need today? These are not amenity questions. They are resilience questions — and they belong in the retirement planning conversation alongside withdrawal rates and asset allocation.

Research suggests most Americans are not asking them. The MIT AgeLab-John Hancock Longevity Preparedness Index finds that Americans score just 60 out of 100 when assessed on the foundations of physical infrastructure and support systems in retirement. Financially, many have a plan. Structurally, most are underprepared for the world the plan assumed would remain stable.

For financial advisors, it means revisiting assumptions that have long gone unquestioned.

For policymakers, it raises urgent questions about how exposed older populations are to systemic shocks.

And for individuals approaching or already in retirement, it asks a more fundamental question: Are you prepared not just financially but structurally for a world that has become more uncertain than the plan assumed?

George Didn’t Plan for This. Neither Did Our Retirement Planning Model

George put the bill down. Did the math. Adjusted the thermostat by two degrees.

He is not thinking about geopolitical risk or global energy infrastructure. He is thinking about this month, and next month, and the month after that.

By the time global disruptions reach a kitchen counter, they are no longer headlines. They are just the bill.

And they do not feel temporary.