Life Expectancy

Life expectancy for a 65-year-old male is 17.5 years, an approximation based upon current actuarial data that is projected onward. Life expectancy probabilities based on gender and limited health factors are detailed in the graph:

There appears to be no way to viably increase lifespan. Whether telomeres are the determining factor of lifespan is irrelevant. The only factor that can be externally influenced is healthspan, that is, the period within the lifespan that relatively good health can be maintained.

The reason for the continued laborious discussion about life expectancy is purely financial. Fear of running out of money well before death is common amongst rank-and-file peons. In this particular case, there is not much in investment accounts and the retirement benefit is at the minimal payout. Nonetheless, the amount of $2,642 (assuming zero interest rate and no increase in retirement payout from this point forward) can be drawn every month for the next 18 years before the investment accounts are depleted. However, the minimal retirement payout will still continue in perpetuity (until death).

Physical decrepitude is inevitable. Most likely, physical and mental degeneration will increase exponentially after 70-75 years of age. Increasing healthspan will shorten the period of decrepitude but the latter will occur at an even faster rate. And, there really is no reason to spend much money on frivolous endeavors beyond 75 years of age. In fact, any large sums of money saved will be targeted for “quack” medical expenditures. And, blindness (due to the onslaught of macular degeneration) is now a real threat within ten years. Better to have no money at that point in time and become a “ward of the State.”

At 65 years of age, the idea of saving money is ludicrous. However, the denial of death is very powerful indeed. Subconscious beliefs of immortality drive the obsession with saving money. Even the motorhomeless option has partial roots in that kind of denial. The thought of surviving beyond 75 years of in perpetual and accelerating decrepitude is just not viable. There is no “quality of life” that any amount of money can compensate for.

Addendum: According to the Great Prophet, Ernest Becker, the human animal feels uncomfortably small and servile in the face of death. We seek power over each other and the more-than-human world to compensate for felt smallness. As Becker wrote in his final book, Escape from Evil, “power means power to increase oneself, to change one’s natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance.” Money offers this vitalizing power. For Becker, “money is the human mode par excellence of coolly denying animal boundedness, the determinism of nature.”