Life Expectancy

My life expectancy, I'm here until tomorrow unless my luck changes.
 
I am good to 87. Too bad because Dad made it to 95! Mom died of breast cancer at age 57. One relative made it to 97 but had Alzheimers for the last 4 years.
 
On a related note, I wonder at what age do folks start thinking about potential death, even if healthy currently.
I am closing in on 60 y.o. and never think about it except what year to plug in for the retirement calculators.
 
Dtail said:
On a related note, I wonder at what age do folks start thinking about potential death, even if healthy currently.
I am closing in on 60 y.o. and never think about it except what year to plug in for the retirement calculators.
Click to expand...
A few years before 60 I started thinking of it in a sort of theoretical way. When I turned 60 I won't say it was as if a bell went off but it was something like that.

The past two years I have finally done a last Will and associated instructions and have started looking at "Seniors" type of communities. Not necessarily the CCRC types but I haven't ruled them out. (I reckon they're above my budget but I'm not ruing anything out.

"Normal" lifespans seem ridiculously short now even with a theoretical 20+ yrs left
 
Dr told MIL 20 some years ago that she will live to 106. She still believes it and expects to live that long.

I don’t put much faith in the projection that I will live to 84. I’m somewhat accident prone. I’ll fall off a mountain long before then.
 
OK, my favorite anecdote.
I accompanied Mom to a doctor's appointment when she was about 87. She wanted me there in case she forgot what he told her, and the doctor encouraged that.

He asked her how long she expected to live, and she immediately replied "96" in a very matter of fact way. He was surprised at the precision of it and asked her why she thought so. Again, her reply was instant: "Because that's when my father died."

Strangely enough, that is exactly when she died, about 96.5, just like her father.

That demonstrates exactly nothing about my own case, but it was interesting.
 
MIL lived to 88 despite not taking care of herself at all. My Mom lived to 93 and Dad to 96, though neither wanted to live that long. So we’re begrudgingly planning on 95 for both of us, though we’d prefer much less. I assume we’ll feel differently in 10-20 years...
 
My mother’s grandfather, who I knew very well, was a smoker and underground coal miner. He served in the army in France and Belgium for all 4 years in WWI, where he was gassed twice, gunshot wound to the arm and discharged 60% disabled in 1919. (I have his military record and a photograph of him in hospital receiving his “military medal” for bravery). In 1938 he had a bad fall down a mineshaft, shattering his legs, one amputated just above the knee. He lived to 92 and was still mentally acute. Must have had lungs the size of a horse.

My mother died at 62 of endocrine cancer, so who knows when I’ll pop my clogs.
 
imoldernu said:
https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1987-06-28-2569915-story.html

apropos of nothing except awe.
Click to expand...


From the above article:

... In the cities, the sweet smell of flower gardens mixes with the pungent reek of open sewers. The stench from the pits of the local tannery equals just about any odor produced 200 years later. The people you pass on the street may smell a little gamey to your late 20th-century nose. Bathing is a sometimes thing on all levels of society. And many people think it is downright unhealthy. Piles of horse manure and swarms of flies are regarded as obnoxious but unavoidable hazards of urban living...

... Life expectancy in the America of 1787 is about 38 years for a white male. But this is not as bad as it sounds. It is longer than the average life span in England...

Most eat meat three times a day. It is not uncommon for a farm family to consume a half pound of meat per person, per day.

But if food is plentiful American eating habits are something less than healthy. One European visitor calls their 18th century diet ". . . a regimen calculated to injure the stomach, the teeth, and the health in general . . . "

This traveler notes that the day begins at breakfast where Americans, "deluge their stomach with a quart of hot water, impregnated with tea, or so slightly with coffee that it is mere colored water." Then, "they swallow, almost without chewing, hot bread, half-baked toast soaked in butter, cheese of the fattest kind, slices of salt or hung beef, ham, etc., all of which are nearly insoluble." Dinner or lunch follows with a mixture of beef puddings, turnips and potatoes that "swim in hog lard," and tea so strong, "that it is absolutely bitter to the taste."...
Click to expand...

And now, when people have to flee their home for a few days to escape wild fires, or to be in the dark for the same duration due to power outage, they complain bitterly and call it 3rd world living. :hide:
 
The life expectancy calculator told me I died some time ago, but it was during that lost "Spring Forward" DST hour, so I'm still here.

Edit: No, I'm not Stephen Wright.
 
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braumeister said:
OK, my favorite anecdote.
I accompanied Mom to a doctor's appointment when she was about 87. She wanted me there in case she forgot what he told her, and the doctor encouraged that.

He asked her how long she expected to live, and she immediately replied "96" in a very matter of fact way. He was surprised at the precision of it and asked her why she thought so. Again, her reply was instant: "Because that's when my father died."

Strangely enough, that is exactly when she died, about 96.5, just like her father.

That demonstrates exactly nothing about my own case, but it was interesting.
Click to expand...

I may have told this story here before:

My grandfather on my mother's side was 100% pure Scottish - born in the Hebrides, educated at the University of Edinburgh at the same time as Eric Liddell (central character in "Chariots of Fire").

His wife predeceased him, and as he was arranging for the double headstone, he discovered that they were carving her name, birth date, death date, and his name and birth date. As the story goes, he asked how they would go about carving his death date.

The answer came back that they would go to the cemetery, remove the headstone, bring it back to the shop, carve his death date on it, and then cart the headstone back to the cemetery and reinstall it.

My grandfather, of course, thought that would be way too expensive, so he picked a random date somewhere a few years down the road (he wasn't too healthy - a smoker and a drinker) and had them carve it on there. It would be wrong, of course, but it would be cheaper.

He outlived that date by a year or two, but as far as I know somewhere in Orange County there's a headstone for Callum Macleod with the wrong death date on it.
 
Dtail said:
On a related note, I wonder at what age do folks start thinking about potential death, even if healthy currently.
I am closing in on 60 y.o. and never think about it except what year to plug in for the retirement calculators.
Click to expand...

I was diagnosed with a life-threatening problem at the age of 56. I was cured and will be 63 shortly.

I don't think about when I will croak. It is not knowable. It may come any time.

And I don't care about retirement calculators any more, as my spending is so low that I am guaranteed to run out of time before money.
 
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The SSA estimates I'll live to 82. That's pretty close to other life expectancy calculators I've tried.

Historically, my dad died at 51 (smoking caused cancer), my grandparents died in their late 60's/early 70's, and most of my great grandparents died between 29 and 61. I only have three relatives that lived to their early 80's. So genetically it's not looking too good for me. :)

I'll be 56 in a few weeks, and am generally in good health other than being overweight and not getting enough exercise. I don't "feel" like I'm 56, at least compared to what I remember of my grandparents in their 50's. I don't take any medications, eat well, and still enjoy hiking and other activities (though not often enough to consider it regular exercise). So who knows, maybe I'll beat the family odds. Maybe not.
 
No tobacco but DW is still smokin' hot

mountainsoft said:
I don't "feel" like I'm 56, at least compared to what I remember of my grandparents in their 50's.
Click to expand...

When I was a wee bairn, the oldest person I knew was my paternal grandmother. She was born around the turn of the 20th century. So in the early 1960s, the furthest back I can remember, she would have been just starting her early 60s.

And you know what? At 62 or so, she really was old! It's not just my imagination, either. She was frail and withered and bent. Somehow she made it beyond 70, although she was bedridden her final few years.

But she also was typical for her generation, at least the sample set available to a five year old me. She came from a time when polio was legitimate threat, when diabetes was a death sentence instead of a pill. It didn't help that she burned a pack or two of Pall Malls every day of her life, but so did a majority of her peers. Activity consisted of indoor housekeeping rather than deliberate exercise, and while she wasn't overweight that's probably mostly attributable to being an indifferent cook.

A generation later, my late MIL resembled my dear GM. Another lifelong cigarette junkie, she was already brittle and slowing down in her 60s when lung cancer took her out.

However, fast forward to today and my own DW looks and acts much younger than those women from earlier epochs. Not smoking plays a part, but regardless of the reasons she is simply much younger than our ancestors at a similar age.

Gratuitous thread hijack: I expect her to outlive me by a fur piece, ergo I'm delaying SS to 70 (if I make it that far) for her benefit.
 
My grandparents all lived until late 80's early 90's and spent very little time in a NH (a few months). 2 of the 4 were active and 2 weren't. My mom stayed very active and died just short of 90 with spending a week in hospice. Her sister is still alive and living alone at 94. I think it's a combo of good health habits and genes.
 
Dtail said:
On a related note, I wonder at what age do folks start thinking about potential death, even if healthy currently.
I am closing in on 60 y.o. and never think about it except what year to plug in for the retirement calculators.
Click to expand...

I remember thinking about death one day in my twenties. I was riding in my car pool back home from w*rk, and as we were going up a curvy hill, a MACK truck was flying down the hill towards us in the curve. My imagination is very vivid, and I got a visceral feeling of being hit head-on. Didn't happen, but you just never know when it will be your time.
 
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