I'd prefer to die with a zero balance and no debt. Timing that could be an issue.:eek: Doubt that the wife is real keen on that idea about zero balance.
trendo: I'm no math whiz, but in your example, 78 would be the median and not necessarily the average. 78 is the life expectancy for men in the u.s. 80 for women.
In 1970 the average price of a car was around $3900. Today it's around $30,000. So based on this, in 40 years we can roughly expect a car to cost $300,000? Better hope our retirement savings and investments keep up with inflation.
becoming debt free and happy is very easy. Stop paying the bills and get kicked out of the house by your wife. I did that a few years ago. Then you have to find some subsidized housing, I live in a subsidized [church coalition money] apartment for $902/month and that includes three squares and a parking space... sure the people here are tranquilized and medicated beyond all reason and a couple of them are on the Megan's Law List but I wanted a quiet place to work on some trading problems and software and voila!! No commute, no wife bitching at me to get a job to support her lifestyle, no cooking duties, it's the greatest!! And a half mile to a Southern California Beach with a pier and a restaurant thereon... forget making all that money, just ask the Lord to bless you!! There is no means testing here, if my trading software starts making the big $ I can keep the place whether I need it or not...
An excerpt from the latest from this clown (this time, his plan to improve the economy): "First, Altucher says, we should allow all homeowners to refinance their mortgages at today's low rates. Then the Fed should buy S&P Index futures to make the stock-market go up. Then we should give everyone who paid taxes in 2009 a 20% refund. Then the states should start selling off assets like bridges, highways, trains, and parks to raise cash to cover their massive budget deficits. Altucher is the first to admit that all these measures would benefit him personally..." http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,^SPY,^IXIC,^QQQQ,^TNX,^TLT I don't have much of a problem with the last two items, but the Fed outright buying S&P futures on top of POMO and QE2? Do we want the stock market to be 100% disconnected from reality?
Well with CNN saying debt is the new slavery tonight at 9pm. Maybe altucher is right http://tinyurl.com/2f7ykhr
Talk to your insurance actuary. 78.4 years - 2008 Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators Disclaimer www.google.com/publicdata ââº
Life expectancy varies widely depending on many factors. For those in the western world one big variable is when you were born. In the US if you were born in 1960 it's 70-75 years. Born in 2000 it rises to 75-80 years. http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/life/index.html Obviously if you smoke and do other unhealthy crap you're going to pull the numbers down. Ot maybe you just get unlucky and get killed young or get some fatal disease. Now, if you take out all those people who die from something other than age you end up with a different number for sure. In my case, mom and dad are late 60's and very active and always have been. Grandma is 93 and just stopped driving 2 years ago. MIL is 87 and just stopped working fulltime last year. Non of them have ever smoked or drank. FIL died in a fire at 44 because he was passed out drunk. Average age of death for those 5 if the 4 living died tomorrow is 72. The truth is, if your not unlucky and get killed or get the wrong DNA and you take reasonabily good care of yourself you're likely to live until at least 80 if not 90. Especially with the advancements in medicene. And while you might not run a 4 minute mile, you'll be able to be a lot more active than seniors of a few decades ago who didn't exercise ever, smoked like chimney's, and didn't have mri's and such to catch things early. Bottomline: you better have a lot money or you're going to regret it. In fact, you might well die early just due to boredom and lack of activity if you can't afford to do things.