There’s an understandable focus on life expectancy whenever we look at an individual’s situation, unsurprisingly nobody wants to consciously run out of money before they run out of life.
Perhaps even greater attention should be paid to healthy life expectancy.
What is healthy life expectancy?
Healthy life expectancy is a measure of the number of years someone is expected to live in good health. Accepting its far from a perfect guide, as it’s based on current health and mortality rates rather than projections of how they might change, but it’s still helpful.
The FT’s brilliant Sarah O’Connor explored this recently and noted big differences in healthy life expectancy between those living in least deprived areas and most deprived areas in the UK.
Contrast these with healthy life expectancy years across Europe.
The important application of this data is how you may integrate this into future lifestyle choices and how you fund these choices.
Lifestyle expenses aligned with healthy life expectancy
Rather than simply assuming that your lifestyle expenses will start at an agreed figure in your early 60’s and then rise in line with inflation each year, possibly until your late 70’s, when research shows there’s likely to be a reduction, it may be more accurate to assume and model greater expenses during these healthy life expectancy years with a reduction thereafter and a further reduction again in your late 70s.
We’re reluctant to trot out the well-used cliché of life is not a dress rehearsal, but if you haven’t already thought about healthy life expectancy and what this might mean for your own future lifestyle, now is a really good time to be starting! And if we can help, please contact us via the form below or call us on 01825 76 33 66.
