Transcript

The toughest thing about financial planning, especially for retirement expectations, is that nobody knows how long they’re going to live. That makes planning how to pay for those years a bit of a challenge. For the most part, until now, it’s been about guessing and actuarial tables.

But advances in what are called biomarkers and genetic indicators may be able to put an accurate number on your life expectancy – or a better guess, anyway.

It seems a combination of biomarkers that are taken from our saliva and pictures of our faces can give us a much more accurate guesstimate of when we will expire.

Recent research indicates we can learn a lot from a photo. Turns out the old compliment “you look good for your age” has some merit: Your appearance is actually an indication of how quickly you are aging.

This is really good news for retirement planning because a combination of facial analysis, gene testing and other new biomarker technologies are providing meaningful data not just about how long will live but also about how well we will live too.

Setting Realistic Retirement Expectations

Of course, there is always the problem of people wanting to live as long as they can but not giving much thought to how they’ll pay for it. A full 53% of respondents to a recent survey stated they want to live to age 100. I wonder if they have given any thought to what it costs to live that long.

So if we can now get a good guesstimate of life span and what is now being called “health span”from a photo of our face, at this point I’m sure you’re thinking, “This sounds good. Where’s the slap in all of this?”

In the summary of the study I read on the topic of improved facial recognition technologies and longevity, the author thought it was necessary to tell people that wearing makeup for the photo would not improve their chances of living better or longer lives.

Really? He had to say that?

That reminds me of the blonde joke where a blonde was told that because she was blonde, she had a higher risk of skin cancer. So she dyed her hair black.

I don’t know of anybody who’s using this technology yet to establish a more accurate life span or retirement expectations, but it’s something to keep your ear to the ground about. It would be a big help for planning purposes.

Good investing,

Steve