Gauging Your Longevity
Like many of us, if your goal is to retire in your mid-sixties, it is feasible that you will need to plan for a 20, or even perhaps a 30 year phase. So, even knowing roughly how long you will live can be a big help to you and your advisor when setting the course of your longevity planning.
At the very beginning of the planning process we sometimes tell people we work with, “If you can tell us exactly when you will die, we could build you the perfect plan.” While no one we know has such a crystal ball, you can be sure that there are many tools that can help estimate your life expectancy.
Recently, CBS Market Watch contributor Steve Vernon commented on a few of these calculators. Take a look and see how you score.
The Society of Actuaries (SOA) advises that it’s a mistake to plan to your average life expectancy, since there’s a 50/50 chance you could live beyond that average life expectancy. The SOA sponsors a simple life expectancy calculator that shows not only your life expectancy, but also the odds that you’ll live to various ages beyond your life expectancy.
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company sponsors a simple online calculator that asks users just 13 questions about their family history and lifestyle. It shows how someone’s life expectancy goes up or down according to their answer to each question.
There’s another online life expectancy calculator you could use at www.livingto100.com, which is based on Dr. Thomas Perls’ book, Living to 100. This calculator asks a number of questions about your lifestyle and family history but also adds in queries about nutrition, sleep habits, exercise habits, and, interestingly, your emotional state.
You can find another online life expectancy calculator at www.bluezones.com. It’s based on Dan Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones. Named “The Vitality Compass,” it also asks questions about your lifestyle, nutrition, exercise habits, and emotional state, but no questions about your family history or your blood pressure or cholesterol counts. It also wants to know your income, a subject not covered by the other calculators.
The differing results demonstrate that life expectancy calculations are just estimates based on a number of assumptions — they aren’t your destiny. There are many factors that can affect your life expectancy, and our scientific understanding of life expectancies is still evolving. No matter how many questions a system asks you, you’ll never know for sure know how long you’ll live.
Nevertheless, estimating your life expectancy is a good use of your time, since you’ll get a better idea of how long you could live and how your lifespan might vary than if you just guessed. And if you adopt the suggestions for improvement, you have a very good chance of making a positive difference in your life.
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