Carolyn and I have recently had several serious discussions about whether the amount of money we have put aside for retirement would last long enough. Of course we could both die in an accident this week and there would be no problem, but that certainly isn't our first choice. We found ourselves, instead, thinking of the ages of our parents when they died. My mother died at 59 and my father at 76 while Carolyn's parents both died at age 89. I've already outlived my mother. Based on the average or our parents, I have about 6 more years to go and Carolyn about 30 years.
I came across some web sites offering to take a little of the mystery out of the guessing. This one based in Denmark, give me 17 years, 351 days or long enough to reach the age of 79. This is based on life expectancy tables by country. Currently, it only has data for Scandinavia and the U.S. I find the detail of minutes and seconds rather nonsensical but fun. This longevity calculator, like comparing to our parents, simply uses the average of all people at a certain age.
More useful, are calulators which look at behavior such as Living to 100. I was a bit put off by the need for registering in order to use the calculator knowing that it was part of a marketing ploy so you could be sent all sorts of advertisements. But the survey obviously considers important data such as your smoking and drinking habits, your weight and exercise regimen, and a little of your family history and current health status. So I was delighted to see my "score" putting my life expectancy at 91 or another 29 years. Maybe there are a few more years left in this old body after all.
Fortunately, our retirement calculations were based on our living to age 90.
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