We bring Willem Drees to the present with a time machine and let him grow up as a Millennial. He rents a home, changes jobs, becomes self-employed and pays for things he will never own. Then we give him his old assignment: help people grow older without losing their financial security and independence. What would he build?
Drees didn’t invent pensions, although his place in Dutch collective memory sometimes suggests otherwise. His emergency old-age provision of 1947, followed by the introduction of the AOW under his premiership in 1957, made him a defining figure of Dutch old-age security. The ambition was consequential: growing old should not mean becoming poor or completely dependent on your family. It was about income, but also about dignity and having a say in your own life.
We’re not going to pull that achievement apart with the benefit of hindsight. We are curious about what Drees would notice if his formative experiences were ours. Growing up with the internet, a housing shortage, flexible employment and climate concerns could give him a different perspective on the same assignment. The promise might remain familiar, while the arrangements needed to deliver it could change considerably.
If Drees grew up today, would he start with the pension—or with the life it needs to support?
Different lives, different priorities
Our Millennial Drees is a thought experiment, not an attempt to give a historical figure contemporary opinions. It lets us explore prosperity, wellbeing and growing older before getting caught in the mechanics of pensions. Those mechanics matter: AOW, workplace pensions and individual provision play different roles, and the Dutch system is already changing under the Wet toekomst pensioenen. But the starting point here is the life those arrangements are supposed to support.
Generational labels only take us so far. Millennials and Gen Z include homeowners and people unable to leave their parents’ house, enthusiastic entrepreneurs and reluctant freelancers. Choosing access over ownership is different from being unable to buy. Wanting meaningful work is different from having the bargaining power to demand it. Our Drees would need to understand what people value, what they expect and what their circumstances allow.
Meaningful living and working
Work provides income, but also structure, companionship and sometimes a substantial part of our identity. It can give people energy or wear them out, which makes a considerable difference when discussing retirement. Gradually reducing hours may appeal to someone with rewarding, manageable work. Someone doing physically exhausting work may need a dependable moment at which they can stop.
Then there is the meaningful work that doesn’t produce a salary: raising children, caring for a partner or helping an ageing parent. These activities contribute to society while potentially weakening the carer’s own financial security. If we want people to look after one another, our arrangements should recognise the consequences rather than treating care as an inconvenient interruption of a normal career.
Financial independence and the freedom to choose
FIRE, Financial Independence, Retire Early, offers an interesting perspective because its appeal is often control over time rather than retirement itself. Saving and investing, frequently combined with considerable restraint in spending, are intended to make paid work optional. It is an individual route towards a freedom that pensions aim to provide later, although it is neither available nor attractive to everybody.
The tension is how much life to postpone for future security, and how much security to risk for a better life now. People may want time for education, care or a different career well before pension age. More flexibility could help, but someone using savings to pursue an ambition is in a different position from someone using them to pay overdue bills. A responsible design needs to account for both.
Ownership and everything “as a service”
Swapfiets provides a bicycle without making every repair your problem. Subscriptions provide software and entertainment without a substantial upfront purchase. Access can be convenient and flexible, but the payments continue for as long as you need the service. The implications depend on what is being replaced: renting a bicycle is not comparable to renting a home.
For retirement, the relevant question is what recurring obligations follow you into later life. The same pension income can provide very different levels of freedom depending on housing costs, debts and essential services. Our Drees would need to examine the monthly life attached to the pension, not only the amount arriving in the account.
A different way of living
Housing is an expense, potentially a source of wealth, and the setting in which much of later life happens. A home that works at thirty may become difficult at seventy. Moving somewhere more suitable can mean leaving the neighbours, routines and relationships that make life comfortable.
Shared and multigenerational housing could reduce costs and make mutual support easier, but community requires more than a communal kitchen. Privacy, responsibilities and access to professional care determine whether living together feels supportive or restrictive. Housing belongs in this discussion, without assuming that everyone will own a property or that a valuable home automatically provides spendable income.
Saving for a future worth living in
Pensions connect money earned today with life decades from now. Sustainability therefore concerns both the investments and the conditions in which people will eventually spend their income. Energy costs, climate risks, infrastructure and the quality of housing all influence what it takes to live well.
This doesn’t make every investment labelled sustainable a good pension investment. Returns, costs, risks and credible impact still need scrutiny. It does mean we should consider what we help build while saving, because private wealth and the quality of our shared surroundings are connected.
Global lives, national arrangements
Some people can now work across borders without leaving home, or move abroad without leaving their employer. Pension rights, taxation and healthcare remain connected to national rules and personal circumstances. A borderless-looking working life can hide a considerable amount of administration.
Mobility also affects care. Online contact helps maintain relationships, but it doesn’t take a parent to a hospital. Our Drees would need to consider both portable financial arrangements and the practical consequences of families living farther apart.
Smart technology and money you cannot see
Financial services can be immediate and easy to use while the decisions behind them remain difficult to understand. Subscriptions renew automatically, investments move on a screen and a pension sits behind a login you rarely visit. Access to information is useful, but it does not automatically give people a meaningful view of their future.
Technology could help connect decisions with consequences. Someone considering fewer working hours or self-employment could explore scenarios in understandable language, including the assumptions and uncertainties. AI, programmable money and digital currencies deserve attention where they solve a real problem. A fluent explanation or frictionless transaction is not enough; the service needs to help people make sound decisions and recognise when they need human advice.
How do younger generations imagine growing older?
These themes provide a framework, not evidence that younger people share one vision of retirement. To develop the story further, we need their experiences alongside expert perspectives. Asking people about pensions can quickly become a test of financial knowledge. Asking about a good later life can reveal what those financial arrangements are actually meant to achieve.
The distinction between wanting, expecting and being able to afford something is especially useful. Someone may want to stop working at sixty, expect to continue until seventy and have little idea what either option would mean financially. That gap deserves more attention than another list of generational preferences.
What is wellbeing?
An ordinary week at seventy is a useful place to start. Where do you live, who do you see and what do you spend your time doing? This makes wellbeing more tangible than an imagined retirement holiday. It brings health, independence and belonging into the same conversation, while leaving room for different ambitions.
It also exposes assumptions. Longer lives do not necessarily mean more healthy years, and neither is distributed equally. Partners, children and neighbours may not be available to help. A credible approach needs to work for people without a strong personal support network, rather than quietly relying on one.
What is prosperity?
Prosperity may mean accumulating wealth, but it can also mean relief: being able to pay the bills, help a family member or refuse unsuitable work. Money matters through the choices and protection it provides. Affordable housing, accessible transport and dependable healthcare affect how much someone needs to provide privately.
Differences within generations are important here. Inheritance, homeownership, disability, unpaid care and career continuity all shape the resources people carry into later life. Framing pensions only as a contest between young and old would miss much of the inequality our Drees needs to understand.
When does your old age begin?
Retirement provides an administrative marker, but health, relationships and ambitions rarely change together on one birthday. Some people want a clear end to paid work. Others would prefer fewer hours, another role or an opportunity to start something new. More flexible transitions could accommodate those differences, provided flexibility does not become a polite description of financial necessity.
The freedom to keep working means something different when stopping is a real option.
Responsibility needs to be explicit too. People can prepare and save, but they cannot fully control their health, employment prospects, investment outcomes or lifespan. Government, employers, pension organisations and individuals each have a role. Families and communities contribute, but essential security should not depend entirely on their availability.
What our Millennial Drees might build
The experiment points towards connected priorities rather than a single new product. A dependable income remains fundamental, as does sharing risks that individuals cannot reasonably carry alone. Around that foundation, Drees might pay closer attention to transitions between employment, self-employment, learning and care. People should be able to understand how those transitions affect their security and what they can do about it.
He might also connect income, housing and care more deliberately. These systems meet in the same household, even when the institutions responsible treat them separately. Technology could make that interaction easier to navigate, provided the calculations are dependable, the assumptions visible and help available when circumstances become complicated.
There are difficult choices here. Guarantees cost money, flexibility can weaken protection and more choice can create more complexity. Recognising unpaid care raises questions about who funds that recognition. Innovation is useful when it helps address these tensions, not when it gives them a more attractive interface.
Keeping the promise
Bringing Drees into the present separates the ambition from the arrangements that grew around it. His contribution belongs to a particular time, but the desire to grow older with security, independence and a place in society does not. Millennials and Gen Z will encounter that ambition through different careers, housing conditions, technologies and relationships, with substantial differences between their own lives.
Our Millennial Drees might preserve more than we expect while changing things we rarely include in a pension discussion. That would be a worthwhile outcome. The point is to understand what needs protecting, what deserves reconsideration and how income, housing, health and connection can support one another. Keeping the original promise may require looking well beyond the pension itself.