As theorists emphasize the role of consumption and identity in daily practices and present new conceptualisations of later life as situated within cultural generational fields, this chapter examines how cultural gerontology informs our understanding of money and later life. New modes of governing ageing populations rely on cultural change, expecting individuals to ‘act on the self’ to fulfil government’s greater vision of fiscal self-sufficiency in an individualised, complex and risky financial world. Connecting our understandings of ageing with the financialisation of later life and the cultural sphere will be important agendas for critical gerontology in coming decades.
