Probably the single most common concern people have when talking to brokers is retirement planning, and probably the single most common question when talking about retirement planning is "how long should I plan for"?
Well, to help with that planning, here are some figures from the Center for Disease Control about average life expectancy, by age and sex, for people who live in the United States. This should prove to be both helpful and informative, and sobering and morbid.
| Age | Total | Male | Female |
| 0 | 77.7 | 75.1 | 80.2 |
| 1 | 77.2 | 74.7 | 79.7 |
| 5 | 73.3 | 70.8 | 75.8 |
| 10 | 68.4 | 65.8 | 70.8 |
| 15 | 63.4 | 60.9 | 65.9 |
| 20 | 58.6 | 56.1 | 61.0 |
| 25 | 53.9 | 51.5 | 56.1 |
| 30 | 49.2 | 46.9 | 51.3 |
| 35 | 44.4 | 42.2 | 46.4 |
| 40 | 39.7 | 37.6 | 41.7 |
| 45 | 35.2 | 33.1 | 37.0 |
| 50 | 30.7 | 28.8 | 32.5 |
| 55 | 26.5 | 24.7 | 28.0 |
| 60 | 22.4 | 20.7 | 23.8 |
| 65 | 18.5 | 17.0 | 19.7 |
| 70 | 14.9 | 13.6 | 15.9 |
| 75 | 11.6 | 10.4 | 12.3 |
| 80 | 8.7 | 7.8 | 9.3 |
| 85 | 6.4 | 5.7 | 6.8 |
| 90 | 4.6 | 4.1 | 4.8 |
| 95 | 3.2 | 2.9 | 3.3 |
| 100 | 2.3 | 2.0 | 2.3 |
So, let's put that into practice. Let's say you're a 35 year old man, who wants to retire at age 66. Checking the chart, you see that you can expect to live another 42.2 years (on average). You plan to work for another (66 - 35) = 31 years, so you need to plan for at least (42.2 - 31) = 11.2 years. But wait, there's more!
Skip ahead to the "age 65" row. If you, our hypothetical 35 year old male, actually make it to age 65 then it turns out you should have actually planned for at least 17.0 years. That's your actual, anticipated remaining life span at age 65.
But,if you then survive that full 17 years (making you age 82), you find that statistically you've got about another 6-7 years left in you. And if you survive those years, making it to age 90, you've still statistically got 4.1 years left in you. This rapidly turns into an attempt to murder the tortoise in Zeno's Paradox, but it illustrates the difficulties of knowing exactly how long you should plan for.
This is not to say that this chart is useless. It still gives you a frame of reference, after all. It lets you know that if you're 35, and you want to retire at age 66, you have to plan for at least 11-12 years of living on your retirement assets. But plan for a best case, and assume you'll live at least 50% longer.
After all, it's memento mori. Not memento mori primum.
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