Airline piloting is a crappy career by design. That was the case even when the industry was regulated. Hence the age old saying to always keep your first house and first wife.

I'm loathe to use personal finances as a yardstick for changing retirement age because that argument places pilots' personal needs above safety.
In 2012, I will hit 8+ years on furlough in the 12 years since being hired by United. I'm not alone in that fate; I'm just fortunate that I didn't get hired at AMR because those furloughees have seen their careers crater even more than United furloughees.
I've done OK financially since being furloughed but there are plenty of others who have had a very tough road to hoe. And the second furlough was even tougher for many of us than the first.
Have there been more old pilots than young pilots who have had their homes foreclosed on in the last decade? I'll bet that more young pilots have lost their homes.

So let's say we ignore safety aspects of aging because {sarcasm] we all KNOW that every airline pilot is Benjamin Button - as they get older, they are better, stronger, sexier, faster, etc. [/sarcasm] We would need to use personal finances as a measurement of whether or not we should allow pilots to continue to fly past a certain age. What's the maximum amount of personal wealth that a pilot could have without being forced to retire? $1 million? $10 million? Pick a number because if anyone's using the personal finance argument as the reason for/against an age change, they're saying that safety doesn't matter.

65's now the law. It isn't going to get rolled back to 60. But you would have to be extremely naive to think that there aren't forces at work pushing to increase retirement age. Frankly, it's in the government's best interest to have all citizens work until one day prior to dying.

... I'm still waiting to read details from Johnso29 on these 163 retirements at Delta.