Living longer takes lots of money -- prepare by knowing your maybe life expectancy

By Dian Vujovich

The Social Security Administration has done their homework and come up with a spanky new calculator to help us get an approximation of our life expectancy. Of course it comes with no guarantees but then again nothing in life ever does.

If you’re into averages and doing some long-term financial planning— like trying to figure out how large your nest egg needs to be, how much of your trust fund may really get eaten up or whether or not to purchase long-term care insurance—check out the SS Administration’s life expectancy calculator right now at: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/population/longevity.html . It’s easy to use, informative and kinda fun once you start playing with it and entering other people’s info.

I put in my gender, date, month and year of birth to find out that someone with those same stats is likely to live another 22 years, on average. (Hum, that doesn’t seem like much time if I were to learn that data on one of my isn’t-life-great days, but it seems way too long if the info came on one of those days from hell. )

Of course, the longer one lives the longer one lives when it comes to averages. In my case, if I were to live to age 70, my life expectancy gets boosted from the 84.9 years it is today to 86.5 years.

My father, who was born in 1919 and is still alive and kicking at age 91, can expect to live another 3.2 years, according to the calculator. Certainly hope he can do so at home and not in a nursing home environment. Aside from wanting him happy, the average cost of three years in a nursing facility could easily tally around $200,000. We don’t necessarily consider those expenses when we’re young enough to prepare for them. Particularly on that long end for folks like my father who has already exceeded previous average life estimates and the longevity of both his mom and dad.

Back to the calculator. What this calculator doesn’t know beans about are your personal health, living conditions, and stress levels etc. etc. It’s strictly date and average driven but even so can provide insights.

Those interested in a calculator that asks more detailed questions about your life, like your health, stress levels and sleep habits, and then spits out an answer, you’ll find a calculator that does that at: http://www.Livingto100.com.

How to pay for a long life is something that’s easy to overlook. But with the number of people over the age of 65 growing, and that longer you live the longer you live deal in play, having money to live a long life is a huge reality that’s not to be dismissed. One way for a young or early middle-aged person to prepare is to double the amount of savings they are doing today. Those say age 50 plus might want to research the benefits of a long-term care insurance policy knowing ahead of time that these policies aren’t necessarily a must-have for everyone.