Kolkata: From your neighbourhood personal finance strategist to Warren Buffet, everyone worth his knowledge of time value of money tell us that one needs to be financially prudent in your earning life. The reason: you need to be building a cool corpus to sustain yourself for life after retirement. One usually turns vulnerable after 60 when one ceases to earn but the expenditures remain in the form daily expenditure and, for most individuals, increased expenditure on medical bills. Also financial independence after retirement is becoming more and more important as the middle class expands in numbers and the concept of quality of life is spreading in society.
However, Elon Musk, the high-profile global entrepreneur who has bagged the tag of the world’s richest person for quite a few years, thinks otherwise. In fact, he has stood the age-old concept of saving-investing for post-retirement life on its head. In a recent podcast he thinks that it will become “irrelevant” after about two decades.
Personal savings to become irrelevant?
If the world’s richest person, who commands a compensation as the CEO of Tesla, which is higher than the GDP of several countries, speaks about the impending irrelevance of personal savings for retired life, one could not be faulted for taking it as a light-hearted joke. However, speaking with all seriousness, Musk said, “One side recommendation I have is: Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years… It won’t matter.” Musk made the comment while speaking on a podcast “Moonshots with Peter Diamandis”.
Musk has rested his theory on the anticipation of the fruits of AI. he believes will enable people to have access to “better medical care than anyone has today, available for everyone within five years.” He also predicted a world with “no scarcity of goods and services.” “If any of the things that we’ve said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant,” Musk added.
The Tesla CEO and investor with a personal penchant for tech thinks AI will lead to a future where people will have “whatever stuff they want” and access to superb healthcare and education. In the conversation, Elon Musk referred to a future where advances in AI, energy, and robotics will boost productivity to an extent where there will be an “abundance” of resources that would allow everyone to be granted a “universal high income.” “No scarcity of goods and services. You can learn anything you want about anything for free,” he added.
Musk’s compensation package dwarfs the GDP of many countries
In November 2025 Tesla boss Elon Musk secured a record pay package that could be worth nearly $1tn. The proposal was approved by 75% of votes in the company’s AGM. To get the promised figure, Musk must drastically raise the electric car firm’s market value over 10 years. The position of Tesla is already threatened by BYD, the Chinese electric car company.
When the proposal of the compensation package was announced in 2025, it was found that it exceeded the GDP of 91% of all the nations in the world. In other words, the GDP of these countries was lower in comparison to Elon Musk’s compensation package.