Life Expectancy and Retirement Planning

By Brent Meyer — SafeMoney.com Founder & Editor Reviewed by Licensed Financial Professionals  |  SafeMoney.com — Trusted Since 2011  |  Updated Regularly Quick Answer: Explore how life expectancy impacts your retirement planning. Secure your financial future with safe money alternatives. Learn more at SafeMoney.com. Not everyone thinks this way, but the idea of ‘living forever’ appeals to many people. Or, at least, the thought of living a longer, healthier life. There can be many upsides to living longer. Think about how you could share more in the lives of loved ones from younger generations. You would have a front-row seat to see exciting developments in technology and medical services. You might have the chance to witness new history-making events. At the very least, it would give you the opportunity to see the impact of your lifelong legacy. Over the past century, life expectancy in the United States rose by over 30 years. It’s no wonder why financial researchers say that people can spend as much as one-third of their lives in retirement nowadays. Advances in healthcare, medicine, and technology have led to better management of childhood infectious diseases as well as improvements in healthcare for adults’ quality of life. Because of this, people face the prospect of longer retirements and more years that they will have to cover financially than was so in the past. It’s clear that increasing life expectancy has and will continue to have big effects on retirement. Among other goals, the primary challenge is figuring out how much income you will need to sustain your preferred lifestyle over many years. What is Life Expectancy? Simply put, life expectancy is an estimate of how long a person might live based on statistical averages. There are many factors that are part of this estimate, from lifestyle and household economic status to access to healthcare and diet. Of course, these are averages, which means that some people might live for much longer or much shorter than what life expectancy statistics suggest. This can be seen in examples like the “maximum lifespan” of those who hold the longest-living records of all time. The oldest person ever whose age has been independently verified is Jeanne Calmert, a Frenchwoman from Arles. She lived to be 122 years old, though some researchers have disputed this record. The oldest person whose age has been indisputably verified is Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who l