Most people will live longer than they expect. Some will live much longer than they expect.
All of us should plan accordingly.
This is not how many people think. In 50 years of writing this column, some readers have been aware of the longevity in their family. But more often, people wrote to tell me they were sure to be dead by their early 70s. They planned to spend for few tomorrows.
First Impressions of Life Expectancy
It was difficult to argue. In 1940, for instance, the average life expectancy at birth was 61.4 years for males and 65.7 years for females. That, or a somewhat higher number from U.S. Life Tables in the 1950s and 1960s, was the number most people knew.
Life expectancy at age 65 is a more meaningful figure. But it didn’t add much fuel for longevity. In 1940, men at 65 could expect another 11.9 years. Women could expect another 13.4 years.
But that was then. Today, despite trailing dozens of other nations in life expectancy, millions of Americans are likely to live well into their 80s and 90s. Skeptics should consider these figures from the most recent U.S. Life Tables:
— Life expectancy at birth across both genders and all races: 79 years
— Life expectancy at age 65, 19.7 additional years. It’s 18.4 years for men, 20.8 for women.
Basically, we’re living into our 80s.
The Centenarians Are Coming!
And for every 100,000 born, 2,966 women will live beyond age 100. So will 1,170 men. The cost of supporting centenarians may become a political issue. The Census Bureau projects about 230,000 by 2040 and 422,000 by 2054.
It’s important to remember, here, that life expectancy is the time at which one-half of a given population will have died. The other one-half will still be alive.
This means many people are likely to live well into their 80s, or beyond. More important, these are just basic life expectancy figures. In addition to gender and race, our expectancy is also influenced by our education, income, fitness level, current health, diet, sleep, smoking history, driving history and alcohol habits, as well as whether we have diabetes.
These factors influence our healthy life expectancy (the number of years we will live in good health) and our unhealthy life expectancy (the number of years we will live in poor health). It’s a given that we all want maximum healthy years and no unhealthy years.
If you explore this – which you can do with the Healthy Life Expectancy Calculator that I’ve mentioned in other columns – you’re likely to be as surprised as I have been.
Dim Expectations
I won’t share the gritty details of my family history, but nothing in it suggests longevity. Suffice it to say that my mother died at 56, my father at 43. No one ever said being of Irish or Scotch descent was easy.
Yours truly, out drinking with his dad at age 7. It was birch beer but we spent a lot of time in bars.
But here we are. On Monday I will be 86 years old.
Columns at earlier birthdays: 62 65 70 73 75 80 85
If you’d like to learn about easy, low-cost investing for your entire lifetime, my most recent book, “Invest Like a Couch Potato: Achieve Financial Security and Lifetime Freedom With Ease,” is available on Amazon.
The Long View
According to the Healthy Life Expectancy Calculator, I have a healthy life expectancy of 7.6 years with an additional 2.3 years of unhealthy life expectancy. That suggests I have a 50 percent chance of surviving to age 96. This is 4 entire years longer than the U.S. Life Tables expectancy of age 92 for white men my age.
Better still, I could improve on that by 29.7 months if I exercised more than 3 or 4 times a week. And I could gain another 11.2 months of healthy life expectancy by drinking wine less than 3 to 7 times a week.
How will this work out? Your guess is as good as mine. I am cautioned by having learned, this morning, that a rattlesnake lives under the steps to the house we use as my office and guest house here in Texas Hill Country…
The Big Picture
What does it mean for all of us?
Four major implications:
- Even if you are not in the immortality-chasing crowd, you’re likely to live longer than you expect. So give some thought to how you’ll do that.
- Your fate isn’t sealed, regardless of your age. Small changes in how you live, starting today, can have a dramatic impact on how many healthy years you’ll live.
- Social Security and Medicare are likely to be the biggest factors in our quality of life over the next 50 years.
- Whether we take responsibility, as individuals, for how we live, eat, work and play will determine our future and the future of our country.
Related columns:
At Age 62: Scott Burns, “Great Moments In Personal Finance,” 11/10/2002: https://scottburns.com/great-moments-in-personal-finance/
At Age 65: Scott Burns, “The Future of Old,” 11/06/2005: https://scottburns.com/the-future-of-old/
At Age 70: Scott Burns, “The Amazing Half-Full Glass,” 11/07/2010: https://scottburns.com/the-amazing-half-full-glass/
At Age 73: Scott Burns, “Getting Ready for the Longevity Haul,” 11/10/2013: https://scottburns.com/getting-ready-for-the-longevity-haul/
At Age 75: Scott Burns, “Why It’s A Good Thing To Live Beyond Age 75,” 11/8/2015: https://scottburns.com/why-its-a-good-thing-to-live-beyond-age-75/
At Age 80: Scott Burns, “Beginning My Second Life,” 11/08/2020: https://scottburns.com/beginning-my-second-life/
At Age 85: Scott Burns, “Smiles At 85,” 11/16/2025: https://scottburns.com/smiles-at-85
Scott Burns, “The Couch Potato Investing Path To A Longer & Healthier Life,” 9/26/26: https://scottburns.com/the-couch-potato-investing-path-to-a-longer-healthier-life/
Sources and References:
Healthy Life Expectancy Calculator, Janet and Mark L. Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research, University of Connecticut: https://apps.goldensoncenter.uconn.edu/HLEC/
Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/population/longevity.html
National Vital Statistics Reports, United States Life Tables, 2024, August 25, 2026: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr75/nvsr75-05.pdf
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: Vlada Karpovich on Pixels.com
(c) Scott Burns, 2026