Many issues facing retirees revolve around life expectancy. These online tools may be able to help.

My Comment: Last month I passed a significant milestone; the number of days my father lived before he died. Yes, we’re supposed to live longer than our parents, due to advances in medicine and an awareness of how lifestyle decisions can affect our well being. But as I approached age 70 and passed it, I was very aware of my father’s death.

As a financial planner and advisor, I’m also very aware that in our society, having more money than less is a good thing. But getting to that point is difficult, and for many of us, the stars that were aligned before the recent global meltdown, are no longer aligned and its necessary for us to work hard to get it all straightened out. Much of my time is spent helping others re-align their financial stars.

When people have asked me over the years “when is the best time to buy life insurance?”, the best answer has always been “60 days before you die. When would you like me to come by and have you sign the application form?”. Here are some key paragraphs from an article that you might find helpful if you want to get closer to an impossible answer:

By Eleanor Laise | Kiplinger – Mon, Apr 30, 2012

… Life-span predictions may sound like the stuff of tarot cards and palm readers. But an increasingly sophisticated set of online tools promise to help individuals gain a sense of how long they might live — and retirees, health care providers and financial planners are paying attention.

… Although patients and doctors are sometimes reluctant to discuss the issue, life expectancy can be a key factor in many health care decisions. For example, life expectancy may play into an elderly patient’s decision to undergo various types of cancer screening. Older patients with a relatively short life expectancy — say, five years or less — might consider that potential screening benefits could take many years to materialize, whereas risks could show up right away. Those risks might include false-positive results that trigger unnecessary follow-up procedures as well as the identification and treatment of cancers that are unlikely to produce symptoms during your lifetime. A person with a long life expectancy, however, might focus on long-term benefits more than near-term risks.

… “Many of the things we do in medicine impose risks immediately with delayed benefits,” says Dr. Sei Lee, assistant professor of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Although colonoscopies and mammograms decrease cancer deaths, usually those benefits take five to ten years to be seen, he says.

Dr. Lee, along with several colleagues, this year launched ePrognosis.org, a site that helps health care providers get a better handle on those risk-benefit tradeoffs. The site offers 16 different calculators that estimate mortality risk over specific time periods for various groups of older adults, including those who are hospitalized, in nursing homes or living at home. Although the tools are intended for health care providers, you can use them by clicking a button stating that you’re a health care professional.