How Long Is Long? Planning for a Long Life

The story: The average trap

Ruth and Grace sit on a park bench and talk about planning savings to last past the average life span.

1. Narrator: Ruth looked up the average life span for someone Ruth’s age, then planned the savings to last exactly that long.
2. Grace: But an average means about half of people live longer. My mother lived to 97!
3. Ruth: So if I plan to the average, it’s close to a coin flip whether I outlive my plan.
4. Narrator: And the longer you’ve lived, the better your odds of living longer still. Reaching your 60s raises the odds of reaching your 90s.
5. Narrator: Running short at 90 is much harder to fix than having money left over. So Ruth picks a planning age well past the average.
6. Ruth: If I don’t need it all, the rest can go to my nieces. That’s a problem I can live with.
7. Narrator: Plan to be the one who lives long.

What you’ll learn

1. An average hides half the story

   Life expectancy is an average. About half of people live longer than the average, some by many years. Planning your money to last only to the average leaves a real chance of outliving it.

2. Your odds grow as you age

   The longer you’ve lived, the better your odds of living longer still. Reaching your 60s raises the odds of living into your late 80s or 90s. For a couple, there’s a good chance at least one of the two lives a very long time.

3. Health and family shift the odds

   Your health, habits and family history can push your odds up or down. But nobody knows their own number. That’s why many people pick a planning age, which is a choice to plan past the average, not a forecast.

4. A long life touches every choice

   Planning for a long life shapes when you claim Social Security, whether lifetime income like an annuity makes sense, and how much you can safely spend each year. Longevity risk is the risk of outliving your money.

Key words

life expectancy

the average number of years left

longevity risk

outliving your money

planning age

the age you plan to, a choice and not a forecast

Common questions

Doesn’t planning long mean I’ll spend too little?

It can, if you never revisit it. Checking your plan once a year lets you spend more when things go well, while still protecting your later years.

Remember this

Plan to be the one who lives long.

Try it: Pick your planning age

1. Look up your life expectancy with the life expectancy calculator at SSA.gov.
2. Pick a planning age a good way past it.
3. Run a retirement calculator to that age and note what changes.

No account: use the public Retirement Calculator (/tools/retirement-calculator).

Live facts

Numbers that change over time, with when they were last checked and where they come from.

• Life expectancy calculator

  Source: SSA.gov(opens in a new tab)

• Actuarial life table: odds of living to each age

  Source: SSA.gov(opens in a new tab)