Working out how long you will live

In June last year we had one of our data science people, Ed Foster, take a look at life expectancy calculators. These calculators can be useful tools for conversations about both life and health risks and investment risks. This is because it can be awkward to our loved ones if we die ‘too soon’ and awkward for us if we don’t have enough saved to survive on for a long time in retirement – a problem often described as ‘living too long’, although few would agree with the term.

Our life expectancy is a topic which piques the interest of us. Insurers and many wellbeing schemes offer calculators to enable clients to estimate what age we can hope to live to as a way of building engagement around the fact of mortality and the question of what we can do to improve our health.

There are numerous calculators in play, all requiring varying degrees of user input and level of detail. We reviewed a dozen of them, but will bring to your attention just three: one offered by Fisher Funds, two options from Statistics New Zealand, plus we added the real-age calculator, which does nearly the same job, thrown in to the set as well.

All the calculators vary considerably in the number and type of questions asked. For example, the Stats NZ calculator essentially provides an average simply for current age and gender for a New Zealander, which we felt was a good baseline from which to work.