When planning for your retirement, "you can't plan for the future, in the future," said Robert Kapito, president and director of BlackRock., which is the world's largest asset manager with $3.9 trillion in assets and a reach that is far and influential.
The firm manages pension funds, individual investors and retail investors and owns 5 percent or more in 40 percent of all publicly traded companies in the U.S.
(Read more: Investors: It's time to reposition your portfolio)
Over the next 17 years every single day 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65, and Kapito says many of them haven't started saving for retirement or if they have, most haven't saved enough.
Another thing retirees haven't planned for according to Kapito is that chances are strong that many of them will live longer than any other generation before them.
In an exclusive interview, Kapito talked with CNBC's personal finance correspondent Sharon Epperson, about what investors should be doing now for their retirement and where they should be putting their investment dollars. His advice, your portfolio should be diversified and include equity dividends, high-yield bonds, investments in emerging markets and municipal bonds.
(Watch: Protecting your portfolio)
—By CNBC's Gloria McDonough-Taub.
