Poll: Age of Death for Retirement Planning

[Tree-dweller]

Honest to God, as a quality of life issue...I don't want to to go much beyond 85. I do volunteer work which brings me into contact with folks older than that. All of them - all of them - are not happy/healthy. I understand that that there are plenty of people living full productive lives into their 90's. My family history doesn't project that.

[mamadogmamacat]

120, even though no relative has made it past 90 going back four generations. For a number of reasons, I see 120 as the longest possible, give or take 5 yrs, for a human body to last. And for me, with my medical history, that will require a good bit of both luck and good medical care going fwd. So, assuming 120 took away a lot of the anxiety about RE......plus the fact that if any of my assumptions are wrong...........non-cola DB and SS will be enough, probably more than enough, in my extreme dotage yrs.

[HF63]

Hoping for late 70's because of quality life problems but genes are also a problem.

I retire at 52 and hoping that I get 20 good years at doing what I want.

[traineeinvestor]

None of the above for me/us.

When I FIREd I was 47 and DW 40. My working assumption was that DW could live to or even beyond 100 due to a combination of genetics, good health, healthy lifestyle and medical advances. From a practical financial perspective, a 60 year survival period is indistinguishable from forever, so I planned on the basis that our nest egg would have to last forever, rendering the idea of an assumed age of death irrelevant.

[Alan]

93-93 for us.

I can't remember why I chose 93, but that is what is in the Fidelity RIP that I've used for years.

[NW-Bound]

Why do I need to plan to die at a certain age?

I thought that if I spent way below what FIRECalc says I can, I will not run out of money. I do not plan to die broke, and in fact want to leave my children with some money. Actually my wife will be the one doing that, as she will outlast me even though she is a cougar. She is older (though she looks younger).

Yes, she's a month older. Oh, where are we?

If I can make it to 80, I call myself lucky. But I do not plan to die at that age. Who knows, I may die at 70, or make it to 90. I have tough enough time to plan my next trip, let alone when I die.

[CyclingInvestor]

I planned for the worse case, which for retirement would be living forever.

[HadEnuff]

I chose 100, not because I really want to live that long, but because my desire to not run out of money exceeds my desire to live a lifestyle that would exhaust my assets before I die. As pointed out by others, if the calculators say my money will last until 85, or 90, they pretty much say it will last "forever".
As far as anyone really having a clue, due to previous generations, my Mom's mom lived to be 93 or 94. Six months later we said good-bye to Mom, at 75. My Dad died at 88, but he had siblings who died at 30, and 78. Dad's mom died at 58, his Dad at 69. Two of Dad's siblings are trucking along very nicely in their late 80s. It's a crapshoot.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Why do I need to plan to die at a certain age? I thought that if I spent way below what FIRECalc says I can, I will not run out of money. I do not plan to die broke, and in fact want to leave my children with some money. Actually my wife will be the one doing that, as she will outlast me even though she is a cougar. She is older (though she looks younger).

+1 I plugged in 95 for DW (who is 4 years younger than me) in the calculators when I was planning more than a decade ago but, like NW, we set our SWR at a low enough level that we can effectively last forever. We too want to leave an estate. I no longer run calculators but might start looking at them again after a major drop (e.g 35%+) in equities.

[lem1955]

I used 95 to decide to retire. But I think better than 100 is more likely to be the case. It wasn't worth waiting for the calculators to show 100% confidence at 100 in order to quit work.

[LARS]

I bounce between 90 and 95. Mostly likely me closer to 90 and DW to 95. I suspect 90 is, however, a pretty realistic end point given our respective family history.

As I said in another post on this topic, I think a pretty good starting point is parents ages divided by two and add five years or so (which puts me in the middle of my range). Having said that, DW's father died early (40s) and mother early eighties. But her grandmother lived well into her 90s and DWs medical stats are like her grandmother's. So, who knows...


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[ggbutcher]

Somtimes, I wish I'd never had taken statistics in college...

I use 100, because it appears to be out in the upper 4-6 sigma range of the current longevity means (or, averages, for those wise enough to avoid the 'evil math' of stats). Yes, we'll probably both be gone much sooner, but I'd rather we both be comfortable to whatever end than having to pinch pennies when the kids are trying to figure out how to pay for our burgeoning health care...

[Totoro]

I use 110, which as others have pointed out is almost (not quite) the same as forever for planning purposes at my age.

I don't trust the current actuary tables at all.

With current technology progress I estimate there is a very real chance I might live 200+ years, about on the same probability level as me not making it to 50.

[LARS]

Reading numbers like 110 or 120 it made me realize responses are of less value depending on the current age of poster. If someone is 35 today and says 120, that makes more sense than someone who is 60 today. Just saying...


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[FI by 2024]

If I'm using a calculator, I pick the oldest age it will let me choose which seems to average about 93.

If I'm not using a calculator, I use 100.

In reality, nobody in my family has made it past 77 although my father is almost there and doing okay. We have a 100% success rate at dying from cancer. Nobody has ever made it to the dying from old age stage. If I make it to 80 I will consider myself very skilled at staying alive.

Oh, and I hope to have a DB COLA'd pension that covers my expenses, plus my investments. So I'm another in the group planning to have my finances last "forever."

[FI by 2024]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LARS Reading numbers like 110 or 120 it made me realize responses are of less value depending on the current age of poster. If someone is 35 today and says 120, that makes more sense than someone who is 60 today. Just saying... Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

Fair point. I'm 33.

[imoldernu]

Interesting...
So, four years ago, I posted this:
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ml#post1214041
... in which I said that a major reason for retiring at age 53, was that my personal formula plans included a "spend down", and that I was looking at age 85 to make calculations. (I did not use "calculators".)

Well, now that we've both reached the 80yr mark... a re-negotiation. Still using my original construct, the "planning numbers" show that we'll be ok to age 92, not that we expect to live that long. Still, it's comforting to know that we've gotten this far, without any material change to our financial position or outlook.

The initial plan at age 53 always included the thought that if something went wrong we'd simply go back to w*rk. Never happened. We adjusted our lifestyle to fit our finances, and we're both convinced that this led to our complete retirement happiness. Absolutely no regrets.

[23window]

I use 99 for me and 99 for my DW who is 4 years younger. I've had relatives live healthy, active lIves to mid-90s but late 90s doesn't look too appealing.

[Willers]

We use 95 for me and 100 for DW. We're 53 and 51 now. I plan to reassess every 10 years or so.

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[LARS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu Interesting... So, four years ago, I posted this: http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ml#post1214041 We adjusted our lifestyle to fit our finances, and we're both convinced that this led to our complete retirement happiness. Absolutely no regrets.

I am absolutely convinced that having retired in my late 30’s, I am in much better health, mental state, etc having been a bum for the last 21 years. What I gave up in dollar wealth those prime earning years has more than been outweighed by the betterment of my physical (health) wealth.



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