It’s about how to make our longevity happier
My very good friend Russell T. Hill (Russ, to those of us who know and love him) has written a book called Optimizing Longevity: A Road Atlas for a Happier, Less Predictable Life. And he has been interviewed about it by Ken Stern and Martha Deevy, of the Stanford Center on Longevity (for which Russ chairs the Advisory Council), on a Longevity Book Club event. I have read the book and seen the interview.
So, what is this all about?
Well, longevity is increasing: we all know that. But we don’t yet live our lives to reflect those additional expected years. If we did, we’d switch from our learn-earn-burn three-stage life format to something more like life as a five-act play, as I explained in this blog post. And that, in turn, was based on Dr Laura Carstensen’s book A Long, Bright Future, from which grew The New Map of Life (NMOL, from now on).
Russ takes it from there.
Longevity isn’t about growing old for longer. Let’s make it positive. Let’s make it happier. Not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. And so, let’s start thinking right from the start, even about pre-natal care and its effect on early childhood and how it’s going to affect the rest of anyone’s life.
OK, make it happier. But what about the “less predictable” part of the book’s sub-title? Is that what we want to make it? No, said Russ; life isn’t predictable, like a journey with GPS: it’s inherently unpredictable. So, let’s cope with the unpredictability, let’s try to make life happier, despite its unpredictability, as we go along.
Most publications on subjects like this are addressed to policy-makers. Russ decided he wanted to talk to people.
I’ll let you read the book yourself (it’s a very easy, colloquial read), because we’ll all have different takeaways. For me, almost 15 years into the Enjoy stage of my life (which used to be called retirement), it was the aspects of this stage that interested me most: about how age diversity is a net benefit to society, and about building longevity-ready communities. No doubt readers will take different portions to heart and, I hope, to action.
In the interview, I was delighted that Russ mentioned how much he likes to use the Personal Funded Ratio (a notion I initiated as an adaptation, to individuals or couples, of a defined benefit pension plan’s funded ratio, the ratio of its assets to its liabilities). Russ takes this much further than my original idea. He talks of resources rather than just assets (so, for example, government plans similar to Social Security or the Canada Pension Plan are parts of your resources), and of claims rather than liabilities (with the claims on your resources being whatever you need, or want, to spend money on, or leave to others). And he uses these numbers to help his firm’s clients not just to assess where they are financially, but to help them decide between different courses of action that will change their overall lives.
Much of what he talked about in the interview reflects the fact that life is about so much more than money, even though money is the basis of how to pay for it. So, for example, he mentioned Tim Urban and his website, in which he focuses on not procrastinating, on doing something you’ve always wanted to do – the fact that it has no deadline being something that enables you to procrastinate more easily. And he mentioned Al Bandura, an eminent psychologist he knew personally, and Al’s notion of self-efficacy: don’t waste your last 30 years, do what you want to accomplish, whether it’s personal or leaving a legacy for your kids or your community.
So, with this extension beyond financial notions, will financial advisors evolve into advisors on how best to use longevity? Russ hopes so, adding a form of life coaching; and if not advisors themselves, then through teams that they build.
Inevitably some of the interview focused on financial matters. What I noted was that Russ hopes that 20-year-olds will recognize that saving some money is always important. Get into the habit (automate it, if possible) and for heaven’s sake don’t give up the free money that an employer’s matching pension contribution represents. And at the other end of the age spectrum, Russ observes clients who don’t spend the money they have. As he pointed out (only half joking), if you pass away with more than zero, the balance represents experiences you could have had but didn’t.
An unexpected (for me) element of Russ’s interview came from a question from the audience. We divide people into age categories. Should we divide the oldest group (say, the over-65s) into more meaningful subgroups? Yes, said Russ, in spontaneous and fascinating response; there’s a lot of heterogeneity in that group. So don’t just sub-divide by age. If you consider 75-year-olds, the dispersion of their capabilities is huge. And their motivation varies a lot too. People need to balance what they’re willing to do in terms of exercise, in terms of eating, in all sorts of other ways; so your own capabilities and willingness are what will determine what you do. And then there are different degrees of social engagement, perhaps the most important element of life for that oldest group. So perhaps what we need to do is to end up with a useful matrix, for that overall sub-classification. Such a matrix doesn’t exist today. Perhaps the NMOL could help with this segmentation. (My reaction: yes please, that would be very useful and constructive.)
And the final question for Russ was: what will you do, since you’ve said that there’s so much of the book you had to cut, to keep it to its (very readable 213-page text) length? Answer: perhaps blog parts of the book for a fuller and more specific set of focal points. (My reaction: yes please, anything you add will add to the value of the book.)
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Takeaway
This book is about how to increase our happiness through a longer and less predictable lifespan.
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I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.