Great Expectations

My Mom is 77 years of age today - Happy Birthday, Mom! Most of us, particularly when we're young, never dream we will reach such a milestone - we think we'll have passed away long before that, for some reason. A chat with a life insurance salesman is usually what convinces us otherwise. Their actuarial charts of life expectancies based actual deathly data show that we are all virtually certain to reach advanced years, so we'd better get busy saving for it. I thought I'd take a look at some of this data, so I pulled up a spreadsheet from GAD, the UK's Governmental Actuarial Data (once again swooning in wonder at the power of the internet): http://www.gad.gov.uk/Life_Tables/docs/2004/20045yrUKperiod1981web.xls

I found out that Mom can expect to live about 9 more years, which will probably be a surprise for her, but I'm certainly happy about it, especially when you consider had she reached 77 in '77 she would only have been expected to live 7 more years. I kinda assumed that if she's expected to live 9 more years, that if I looked at the spreadsheet cell for 9 years from now for those aged 86, I would find a bit fat 0. But no, it turns out that if you actually get to live another 9 years you can then expect to live another 6! and if you make that - 92 years old in 2022 - you've got another 3 or 4 years to worry about! So life expectancy turns out to be asymptotic as long as you don't actually pass on! Ye GADs, how comforting. And in case you're wondering, when I reach 77 (in 2030), i can expect another 12 years of mortal coil, so I'd better start investing in some growth stock with similar potential!

Happy Birthday, Mom, and lots more of 'em!