How long will you live? Probably longer than you think. Because of this you will want to plan on living a long life and do what you can, starting today, to make that long life as good as possible.
Don't Underestimate
If you're alive while you're reading this (hopefully you are!), chances are that you will most likely live longer than you think.
Most of us vastly underestimate how long we will live. In my day job as a financial planner I experience this on a weekly basis when I'm helping people plan for the rest of their life. When preparing a financial plan, my default lifespan is 95. This surprises many people and elicits responses like "My Grandmother died at 79 so I don't think I'll live any longer than that", etc, etc. The fact is that most of us will live into our late 80's or 90's. Now, while we may live that long, the quality of our lives is another matter.
That's why it's important to be realistic about your lifespan and do what you can to make your years on earth as healthy and enjoyable as possible.
How Long?
Is living a long life possible? How long will someone born today (2021) live? Take a look at this chart from Macrotrends.net for some insight:
Living a long life is getting easier!
The chart shows average life expectancy at birth from 1950 to 2050 (estimated). The vertical dotted line is today and shows an average (males and females) life expectancy at birth in 2021 of ~79 years. If you go out to 2050 the average is just under 89 years.
Now, for the bigger question. What if you make it to age 65? How much longer can you expect to live? Well, according to the OECD, if you turned 65 back in 2019 you can expect to live, on the average, another 20.7 years for women and 18.1 years for women. That's basically age 86 and 83 and it only goes up from there.
The reason the life expectancy is higher for age 65 than "at birth" in the chart above is that if you make it to 65 you have already avoided many early life causes of death that reduces the average for someone that we start tracking at birth. Think of it as your reward for outliving all the stupid stuff you did back in your teens and 20's!
Key Point: Life In Your Years
While we can't specifically predict how long we will live, we can take action toward living the best life possible, whether we live a long life or not.
The whole goal of Life Maximus is to help you get the most out of life. Because, ultimately, it's not the "Years in your life" that matters. It's more about the "Life in your years". In other words, how well do you live while you're alive.
Now that I've set the stage, future episodes will start digging into all the things we can do to improve and/or extend our life and the enjoyment we get from it.
Maximus of The Week
Each week I will highlight particular items, news articles, videos, recipes, books, music, etc. that I came across and think you will find interesting and helpful as you work to make the most of your life.
Full disclosure: some of the links listed below are affiliate links, meaning I will earn a small amount if you purchase anything from the links. This does not in any way, increase the cost to you and you are not required to use these links in order to purchase any of the items. Thanks in advance for any support!
Here's this week's Maximus of the week.
Enjoy!
Recipe of the week:
For the last few months we've been getting a weekly box of fresh, organic veggies from Misfits Market (highly recommended!). One of the items we picked in a recent box was Swiss chard. I was looking for an uncomplicated recipe in which to use said chard and found this one on food.com: Ground Beef with Swiss Chard.We tried it in our Instant Pot and really enjoyed it. We used grass-fed beef from Crowd Cow and instead of the suggested orzo pasta I just made a little rice and served everything in a large bowl. It was a very tasty meal!
YouTube of the week:
