“I don’t want to live a long time. My parents really suffered in their final years.” I’ve heard this sentiment from relatives and friends who watched their parents really struggle with health and financial issues in their final years. It’s also a common thought of surviving spouses who find themselves alone and frail.
If you haven’t witnessed first-hand the struggles that older people face, it’s normal to want to live a long time. However, once you understand the day-to-day challenges that come with old age—frailty, dementia, running out of money, or loneliness—it’s only natural to reconsider your goals.
Let’s see how we can reconcile these opposing thoughts and incorporate them into your retirement planning.
How Long Might You Live In Retirement?
By using an online life expectancy calculator, you might find that you could live into your late 80s or 90s. These calculators provide estimates of your lifespan based on your answers to questions about your health status, family history, and lifestyle choices.
However, these calculators usually don’t prepare estimates of how many years you might be frail at the end of your life. Prior generations of elders might have died instead of living longer through medical treatments, but advances in medical technology are extending the portion of our lives spent in frailty.
As a result, it’s a good step in your retirement planning to estimate just how long your money needs to last and to plan seriously for a period of frailty at the end of your life.
Consider This Robust Lifespan Goal
Saying that you don’t want to live a long time is a wish—it isn’t a plan. After all, what will you do if, in spite of this wish, you find yourself alive, old, and frail?
Here’s a more robust goal that enables you to develop a realistic life plan:
“I want to live well as long as I can, and I’ll plan ahead for frailty near the end of my life.”
You can define “live well” in a way that reflects your own circumstances and views on life. For example, I define living well as being:
- financially secure,
- as healthy as is realistic for my age,
- pursuing interests that are possible for my health and age,
- being involved socially with my family and friends, and
- being a good ancestor.
This definition recognizes that as I age, my health will most likely decline and I won’t be as active as I was in my go-go years. However, if I plan ahead for my slow-go years, I’ll still be able to consider that I’m “living well.”
And if I plan ahead for my frail, no-go years, I can feel confident that I’ll minimize the burden on my family and friends. By spelling out the details of my “live well” definition, I can more easily translate it into specific action steps to help me meet my goals.
After witnessing the struggles that our parents had in their final years, my wife and I were both motivated to plan ahead for that future time in our lives. The ideas expressed here enable us to enjoy life now without being overly fearful about our final years.