In this episode of Retirement Unpacked, host Al Smith dives into the fascinating world of life expectancy and longevity. Highlighting the impressive increases in global life expectancy, Al explores vital statistics and captivating anecdotes of individuals who have reached their centenarian years. Whether you’re planning for retirement or already enjoying it, understanding these trends can equip you to better manage your financial future.
Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Golden Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to another program of Retirement Unpacked. I want to thank you for tuning in. I’m sure there’s other things you could be doing, but I have some good information for you today, some of which you might have heard in the past, but a lot of the things I talk about deserve repeating because as we move toward retirement or through retirement, there are a lot of concepts that we need to keep in mind. But before I dive into one of those concepts, I want to first announce I am having an event. And the event has to do with the tax pitfalls that we may face as we approach or move into retirement. There will be an event at the Bennett Library. And that will be Friday, October 17th at 1.30 in the afternoon. And the Bennett Library is easy to find. I don’t have their address at my fingertips, but I’ll be able to provide that because there’s about three and a half weeks before the event. Again, that’s Friday, October 17th at 1.30. where we’re going to talk about the tax traps or the tax pitfalls that we may be facing as we move toward and through retirement. We’re going to cover those. It will be a one-hour event, so we’re not going to have some marathon two- or three-hour kind of thing, but we’re going to highlight the really important things about taxation in retirement. I thought about quite a few different things for my topic today, and one of my favorite topics, I’ve talked about this in the past, but I believe it deserves some attention. We’re going to talk about life expectancy and longevity. Now, the reason that’s kind of an important topic is because when Social Security, for example, was first passed into law in 1935 during the Roosevelt administration, the Social Security benefits kicked in at age 65. And ironically, one of the first who filed for Social Security benefits was a lady named Ida Mae Fuller. and she paid into it for a few years. She was a legal assistant in Vermont. She paid in about $22 in benefits, and she collected about $22,000 because she began collecting in 1939, and she collected until the 1970s because she lived to be about 100 or very, very close to it. But the point is that’s something that we are all facing. Some of the statistics about longevity, for example, a woman age 65 has a 25% chance of reaching age 90. And when there’s a couple who are both age 65, the odds are even higher that one of them will live into their 90s. And there are a lot of factors that affect longevity, and I think most of us know what some of those are, exercise and better diet and things of that nature. But I’m going to dive into some of the things that have to do with life expectancy. In developed countries, for example, the life expectancy is between 77 and 90. I know that’s a broad spread. In what they call developing countries, which is a kinder word for saying undeveloped countries, it’s only between age 32 and age 80. One country, for example, the average life expectancy is only age 41, and that is in Mozambique, Africa. Now, one of the things that’s interesting is since they’ve been gathering these statistics, the life expectancy has increased by one to three years for both developing and non-developing countries. And some other interesting things, I always found it fascinating when people reach 100 years old, And that goes back a while. The first person for whom it has been documented that lived to be 100 was named Iliff Philipson. And in 1785, it was recorded that he lived to be 102. And these had to be documented, so there had to be some documents of these people’s birth and so forth. There was another person named Gert Boomgart. I think she was a German. And this was in 1899. She lived to be 110. Another lady named Margaret Neve died in 1903. She was 110 also. A lady named Jean Calmet, I think she was French, in 1997, she died after living 122 years. Another woman named Sarah Now, spelled K-N-A-U-S, in 1999, lived to be 119 years old. The very oldest man, his name was Jeroman Kimura. He was Japanese, I believe. He’s the oldest man who ever lived, and in 2013, he died at age 116. So these centenarians, as they’re called, living to age 100, they are benefiting from the 20% to 30% cause of death call it a cause of longevity, but call it a factor of longevity, because when people live longer than 100, genetics plays a greater part. There are certain genes and things of that nature that help the body’s immune system to fight off diseases in later years, and some of that immune system becomes weak as we age. What’s also interesting about the centenarians is how their number has increased. In the United States, for example, in 1950, there were 23,000 people who were 100 years old or older. By 1990, That’s 40 years later, there were 110,000 people who were 100 years old. And let me re-talk about these statistics. These are globally. These are not just within the United States. In 1995, there were 150,000 people 100 years old or more. In the year 2000, only five years later, that number jumped to 209,000. By 2005, 324,000. By 2009, 455,000 people were age 100 or older. By 2019, 675,000. And five years later, there are or were, in 2024, 935,000 people who were 100 years old or more. And what I have also found very interesting is the country of Japan, just Japan alone is expected to have 272,000
