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Longevity Risk: Planning for a Long Life

Longevity risk is the risk that you live longer than your money lasts. It is the one retirement risk that grows with good news: the healthier you are, the longer the plan has to run.

The usual mistake is to plan to life expectancy. Life expectancy is an average, so a plan built to it runs out too early for about half of the people who follow it. A plan has to work in the long lives, not the typical one, because nobody minds having money left over at the end, and everybody minds running out.

Life expectancy is an average, not a deadline

On Social Security's life table, half of the men who reach 65 have died by 84, and half of the women by 86. That middle age is what most people picture when they hear “life expectancy”. The other half live longer, and the tail is long.

From 65, alive at	Woman	Man	Either of a couple
85	54%	42%	73%
90	32%	21%	47%
95	13%	7%	18%
100	3%	1%	3%

Chance of being alive at each age for someone alive at 65. “Either of a couple” is a man and a woman, both 65: the chance at least one of them is still alive.

Couples face the longest horizon. For a 65-year-old couple the chance that one of them reaches 95 is 18%, and a household's money has to last until the second death, not the first. That is why a plan should run well past either person's life expectancy.

Your odds from today's age

The odds change as you age. Each year you survive, you have already outlived everyone who died younger, so the age you can expect to reach moves later. Set an age to see the chance of reaching each milestone from there, read from the same life table.

Explore: odds from a given age

Age today55

4080

Alive at	Woman	Man	Either of a couple
85	50%	37%	69%
90	30%	19%	43%
95	12%	6%	17%
100	2%	1%	3%

Chance of being alive, from age 55 to 105

A womanA manAt least one of a coupleEven odds

Why the table probably understates your odds

Every figure on this page comes from a period life table: the death rates of one calendar year, applied to a person as they age. It assumes no one ever gets better at keeping 80-year-olds alive. Death rates have fallen for most of the last century, which is why Social Security's actuaries also publish cohort tables that project that improvement forward, and their estimate of how long today's 65-year-olds will live is longer than a period table's.

The table is also an average over everyone. Life expectancy rises with income and education: across US earners, the gap between the richest 1% and the poorest 1% was 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women (Chetty et al., JAMA, 2016). People who save enough to read about early retirement tend to sit in the longer-lived part of that range.

Your own health matters most. The plan's simulations read the same table, shifted 5 years older for below-average health and 5 years younger for above-average health, and blend the men's and women's columns so a household is not modelled by sex.

Four ways to plan for a long life

1. Plan to a late age

A plan that has to last to 95 needs more money than one that stops at 85, so the age you plan to is the most direct lever. Your plan runs to 95 unless you change it, and the quiz suggests your life expectancy plus 10 years, never below 95. Later is safer and costs more; a shorter horizon frees spending today at the price of a thinner cushion if you live long.

2. Take the larger Social Security check

Social Security is a lifetime income that rises with prices, which is exactly the insurance a long life needs. Against a full retirement age of 67, claiming at 62 pays 70% of the full benefit for life and waiting to 70 pays 124%. The check at 70 is 77% larger than the one at 62. Waiting costs the checks you skip and pays off the longer you live; in a couple, the survivor keeps the larger of the two benefits, so the higher earner's delay protects whichever of you lives longer. The break-even math →

3. Turn part of the savings into a life annuity

An income annuity trades a lump sum for a check that lasts as long as you do. It pools longevity risk the way insurance pools fire risk: the people who die early leave money that pays the people who live long. Economist Menahem Yaari showed in 1965 that a saver with no wish to leave an estate does best by annuitizing, yet few people buy one. Annuities give up flexibility and anything left for heirs, and many are not adjusted for inflation, so most plans that use one cover only a floor of essential spending with it.

4. Keep spending flexible

A fixed spending rule has to survive the worst case. A rule that trims spending after bad years, and raises it after good ones, lets the same savings last longer with a smaller chance of running out. Compare withdrawal strategies →

Example: the numbersExample

The sample saver is 35 and in average health. On the life table, someone that age can expect to live to about 79. Their plan runs to 95, and the chance of reaching 95 from 35 is 8%.

That is the point: a plan to 95 is not a forecast of a long life, it is insurance against one. When you build a plan, the quiz suggests a plan-to age of life expectancy plus 10 years, never below 95; for this saver that is 95.

Example figures from a sample household. Build your plan →

Data vintage

Odds on this page come from the Social Security Administration's 2022 period life table for the Social Security area population, as published with the 2025 Trustees Report, the same table the plan's simulations use. The couple figures treat the two lives as independent. Real couples share a household and a lifestyle, so their deaths are somewhat correlated, and the “either of a couple” column slightly overstates the chance that one of them is still alive: an error on the cautious side for a plan.