Читать книгу Retirement Planning For Dummies - Matthew Krantz - Страница 15

You probably know that not all 40-year-olds will live exactly 81.7 years. Some lifestyle choices, such as smoking, have a bearing on how long you live. (Let’s forget about George Burns, the chain-smoking comedian who lived until 100.)

Bankrate tries to capture that variability in its Life Expectancy Calculator at www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/life-age-expectancy-calculator.aspx. You enter not just your age and gender but also personal details: height, weight, whether or not you smoke and drink alcohol, and a little family history.

Let’s go back to our 40-year-old male. He’s 6-feet tall, weighs 150 pounds, doesn’t touch alcohol, but does smoke. With that added detail, his life expectancy is now estimated to be 72.6 years, as shown in Figure 1-2.

FIGURE 1-1: Social Security’s Life Expectancy Calculator helps you see how your lifespan compares with others.

FIGURE 1-2: Bankrate’s Life Expectancy Calculator factors in more details to help you figure out how long you’ll go.

Life expectancy calculators, like many calculators described in this book, provide estimates. Clearly, if you knew exactly how long you’d live, retirement planning would be a lot easier. Unpredictability is a key aspect that makes retirement planning — and life — an imprecise science.