Essay 9

Essay 9: Individual Longevity

How long do you think you will live? If you are young, you probably don’t think much about this. As you get older, you think about it more and more. I don’t really think it helps much to obsess over this. But I do think it helps a lot to be realistic about it. Here are a few things to think about.

When social security started, the average life expectancy for men was 58 and for women it was 52. That was back in 1935. By 1960 that had increased to 66 for men and 73 for women. The full retirement age was 65. So, the statistically average man would retire at 65 and die a year later. Men were, on the average, 2.5 years older than their wives. So, the wife would have been 63.5 when the husband died and could look forward to a decade on her own with social security. So, social security was solvent and the only problem for the wife was to find something to do with her time. I don’t mean to minimize this. It was and still is an important problem. I should also point out that social security was meant to supplement, not replace your earned income, and the amount of social security you receive upon retirement is determined by how much you earned while you were working.

Average life expectancy now is nearly 80 years old. Depending on your current age, you might easily live to 90. And if research into aging continues to increase that may easily bump up to 100. If the average lifespan is 100 years, then a fair number of people will die before that and a fair number of people will live well beyond that. Currently, a quarter of the population will live to 95 and 1% will live to 100. I know this is a lot of numbers, but the takeaway is that you may very well live a lot longer than you had planned and, as time goes by, the strain on Social Security and Medicare will increase.

Your first problem with individual longevity is how will you fund a long retirement. You can hope to die young, but that is not a viable strategy. What if you don’t? What if you retire at 67 with some money put away, and live to be 97? If you run out of money at 77, are you going to get a part time job at a fast-food restaurant to make ends meet?  What if you are careful with your money and don’t run out until 87? Will you get that job flipping burgers then? What if burger flipping has become automated? Do you have a backup plan?

Your second problem with individual longevity is what you are going to do with your time. For a while you can hang out with other seniors. Maybe you can watch reruns of your favorite TV shows from the 1960’s and 1970’s. You probably won’t find new interests. So, eventually reruns will be of those new shows that you don’t like.

Your third problem with individual longevity is your well-being. My fantasy retirement is to live to 100, being active and engaged, and then die in my sleep the day before I run out of money. But it takes a lot of work to maintain your wellbeing as you get older. I often say that once you retire, life becomes your job. If you don’t maintain your health, your golden years can turn to lead. My worst nightmare is to be bedridden for years waiting to die. And I am not being draconian here. I have known people who lived longer than they expected and did not know what to do with themselves. I have also known people who hoped every evening to die in their sleep and did not. Life can be bleak if it comes to that. But there are things you can do to minimize the possibility of the worst-case scenario and I will pick that up in a future essay.

This essay is a little over 700 words. And the recording is about 5 minutes long.

Send an email to me at drjohnartz@gmail.com if you have a comment on any of my essays. And please check out my website at DrJohnArtz.com to see other things I have written.