Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live to 100? If not and dismiss the idea of ever reaching that age, you’re probably not alone. But it might not be as crazy as it initially sounds.

Between 2015 and 2020, the UK population grew by 3%, but the number of people over 65 grew by 12%, the over-85 population jumped by 18%, and the number of centenarians out-stripped them all by growing by an astonishing 40%. In fact, it’s now estimated that a quarter of all children born today will live to almost 100.

If we look a little closer to home, the National Records of Scotland has recently announced the first wave of results from the 2022 Census and the trends around ageing in Scotland make for a worrying read.

In contrast to the UK as a whole, overall life expectancy in Scotland actually fell for the 2020-22 period, with males at birth expected to live for 76.5 years (down from 77.1 for 2017-19) and females to 80.7 (down from 81.1).

Hopefully, this will be a one-off blip which may in part be linked to the coronavirus pandemic. But even with this, more of us are reaching older age – the population of Scotland grew by 2.7% between 2011 and 2022, but the number of those over 65 jumped by 22.5%.

Any national average hides huge variations across the country and for many people in Scotland and elsewhere, the concept of the ‘100-year life’ is inching closer to reality. While we won’t all reach that, many of us are likely to be blessed with the gift of more time. For those of us who are approaching or in retirement, it presents new opportunities to explore alongside some challenges to navigate – most notably in managing our health and finances.

New research from Aegon shows that if we’re to balance these opportunities and challenges, and make the most of our longevity, over-50s – and, yes, I’m well into that group – need to start looking at later life from a range of different angles.

In living longer, we’re adopting highly varied ‘multi-stage’ lives rather than the traditional three stages of education, a job often ‘for life’ and then retirement.

We may have multiple careers, periods of learning and re-training and time away from paid employment, for example to care for loved ones. There’s also a trend towards transitioning from work to retirement – in fact, of the workers surveyed by Aegon, only 27% said they would be making a clean switch from full-time employment into full-time retirement.

This all means we need to re-think our approach to planning and living later life, taking time to understand our personal circumstances and getting to grips with what we’re calling the ‘Five Fundamentals’ – work, wealth (including pensions, savings and home ownership), health, family and wellbeing, or what we want from life to make us happy.

In recent years, there have been big changes in each of these, and not just because of the pandemic. It’s fair to say that the path current and future over-50s will take through the second half of their lives – which Aegon refers to as our ‘Second 50’ – will be unlike anything experienced by previous generations.

Looking at family dynamics as an example, many families are choosing to have children later and are remaining financially responsible for them for longer.

In 2020, official figures showed that the average age of a first-time mother was 31, compared to 27 just a few decades earlier, meaning our children will likely still be dependent on us – financially or otherwise – when we’re in our 50s. The improved longevity of many of our parents’ generation means that we’re also increasingly likely to be offering support both up and down the family tree, with 1.3 million people in the UK now supporting both their children and parents.

So with the retirement years of our parents and grandparents offering few signposts to our own retirements, we are entering uncharted territory of new choices, opportunities and challenges.

In approaching any new experience, many of us will consider the goals we’d like to achieve and what might get in the way – and navigating the Second 50 is no different.

Aegon found that spending more time with friends and family was the number one aspiration (53% of respondents) for our later years. This was closely followed by a desire to travel more (45%) and to pursue new hobbies (33%), as we make the most of our extra time close to home and further afield.

On the other hand, the greatest concern was the possibility of running out of money during retirement (45%). Given the ongoing cost of living crisis and economic uncertainty, that’s probably no surprise. The second most common concern is declining physical health (39%), again, an understandable worry.

Achieving our later life goals will likely involve a balance between the things that we’d like to do, the resources we have and the circumstances we’re in. This is by no means an easy task, but thinking ahead to our Second 50 and picturing our future selves can really help.

So if you’re approaching your 50th birthday, or celebrated it not so long ago, you’ll likely be about to forge your own path, and hopefully can plan for many years to come. Today’s Second 50, while not without its challenges, is a multi-stage land of opportunity. And it’s important not to be constrained by outdated preconceptions of what’s ‘acceptable’ in your 50s and beyond.

That’s why in our latest report, we want to support over-50s to revisit the way we think about our later years, focusing on us as individuals.

The life you live beyond 50 will be entirely different from mine, and mine from anyone else reading this article. We will each face a unique set of circumstances, opportunities and challenges that define how our later lives will play out.

I’ve done the sums and believe it or not, there are millions of different paths. Let’s hope we can all ‘take the high road’.

Steven Cameron is pensions director at Aegon