Estimate Your Life Expectancy With The Longevity Game
Part of estimating your needs in retirement and also in buying life insurance is to know your likely life expectancy. Although kind of morbid, one calculator to help you do this is The Longevity Game by Northwestern Mutual. You just answer a few questions about your lifestyle and family history, and it gives you a number based on their actuarial tables. Fun animations too!
It turns out my median life expectancy is 85, while my wife’s is 95. Not sure how she plans on enjoying a decade without me, but I have been working out more this week as a result. 
This site was found inside one of the 18 books I am trying to read simultaneously, Worry-Free Investing. The books uses it to show that for couples, there is a very good chance at least one of you will reach 95 or 100. So if you want to retire early, you basically need a portfolio that you can live off the income essentially forever while also having the principal keep up with inflation.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
It’s interesting how much more of an impact smoking/drinking/drug use is that eating poorly. Considering the massive popular belief that eating fast food for all your meals will destroy your life it only decreases your life expectancy by 2 years according to their calculator. Compared to 8 years for smoking this is much less significant.
December 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
That was fun! I’m only living ’til 84 though…
On each question I had to click through all the possible answers just to see how the cartoon changed before selecting my real answer.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Wow – it has me living to age 92. Doesn’t say that I will remember anything.
Real Age is another site that will run the age numbers for you to calculate your present “real” age.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Love quizzes !!! I will be living to 87 per the game!
Fun!
December 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I enjoyed being a 2000 year old woman with a weight of 1 pound.
What kind of principle do you need to keep up with that inflation?
Did I mention I am 1′ tall?
December 5th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I managed to get myself a life expectancy at 31 with a current age of 30. I didn’t know binge drinking, recreational drug use, and being obese could be that bad…
December 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
^LOL
I didn’t even think about tinkering with the game…if only you could really predict your life by answering a dozen questions…
December 6th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I did my Mom, who at age 63 is dying of cancer. Hers? 84. I wish.
December 6th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The animations made me laugh out loud. My expectancy is 98, but they don’t ask about cancer in the family…
December 7th, 2008 at 12:09 am
She can hang out with Sarah! Shes supposed to outlive me by 10 yrs, too!
December 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I think your biggest problem was being male.
Women tend to outlive men by about 8 years anyway… totally rigged system, IMHO..