How Long Will You Live? Just Click Here!

I just came across a short blog article on the Seattle PI web site that it turns out was written by one of our Platinum recommended bloggers, Rita Robison. I recommended Rita's blog, The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, in an article on March 19th.

The title of Rita's article was "I'm going to live to be 97. How about you?" You can probably see how that caught my attention. Rita has found a website with a very neat "life expectancy calculator" that asks you a series of questions as it calculates your life expectancy.

One of the neat things about it is that it does these calculations as you go along, so even if the ultimate estimate is not accurate (it seems a little generous to me), it's very instructive to go through the exercise. There's nothing like watching your life expectancy drop as you move the slider down to "light exercise" from "moderate exercise," or admit to higher stress levels, how much alcohol you drink, etc., etc. I think we all know that these things affect our life expectancy, but watching it go up or down with each factor can be very motivating.

And as you regular Platinum readers know, a lot of our "end game" financial decisions depend on a reasonable estimate of life expectancy. A decision about a reverse mortgage can totally hinge on how long you (and your spouse?) might reasonable expect to live. The same holds true for IRA decisions. and remember the social security breakeven point that occurs around age 79? Will you live longer than that?

When I discussed mortality tables in January (here and here), I concluded that most of us have longer life expectancies than we think we have. As I say, I think the calculator is a bit generous. But I'd take anything close to what it said for me... 94!

So head on over to the life expectancy calculator and have some fun with it. And thank you, Rita, for a great find! - Bob

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Bob,

Well, you're a good researcher to find me at my new blog for the Seattle Post Intelligencer called the Boomer Consumer.

It's interesting doing two blogs on the same topic. However, as you know, there are so many topics about boomers that I haven't run out of ideas yet.

Thanks for writing about the Life Expectancy Calculator that I found. I'll do a post and link to your comments.

How is your blog going? Your book?

Rita
May 13, 2008 at 8:55 PM
Anonymous said…
thank you for an interesting post, I suggest to use online mortgage calculator on the website of Fizber, it will help.
May 14, 2008 at 8:21 AM
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