Not a lot of people get pensions where I live anymore (or at least, not enough of one to live on comfortably). If you don't want to spend your entire life working, you could save for retirement, same as you (hopefully) do now. A lot of people plan their retirement so that they can live off the returns of their investments without touching the principal. If you do this, there's not much difference between retiring for 20 years versus 200.