In our house we are counting down months towards retirement, which is both a positive expectation and a financial worry.

It isn’t about how long we expect to live for necessarily since the cost of living will change as our old age changes. The first ten years will be relatively expensive as we plan to travel and enjoy our lives. We’ll also  probably end up spending some money helping to make our kids independent lives a little easier.

Then we’ll probably start to settle down and travel less extensively, live closer to home, more baby sitting and less rock climbing.

And finally we’ll settle into proper old age when our biggest weekly trip will be to the supermarket and relatives, maybe the bridge club once a week, with a (hopefully) brief last two years when physically it all goes “tits up”. The last seems to be true whenever you die, whether at 60 or 90: the last two years can be grim.

Life expectancy at age 65 for men in the UK reached 18.4 years in 2012–2014 and for women it reached 20.9 years. This means that a man aged 65 could expect to live to age 83 and a woman to nearly age 86.

In 2009-11, Disability-Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) for males at birth was 63.9 years, for females it was longer at 64.4 years. Despite having shorter DFLE, males expect to spend a greater proportion of their lives (81.0%) free from disability, compared to females (77.8%). basically women live longer but not in perfect health. Disability can hide a multitude of sins at this age, but given our socio-economic class the cards are stacked in our favour a little.

 

Before we all rush to book one-way tickets to Dignitas when we are 80, it is important to remember that many older people have no social care needs. If you ask people what they would do, knowing now what they do about old age, to prepare for it.

The advice went something like this: make a will, make a living will, put in place power of attorney, have a pension, avoid being overweight, don’t smoke, drink moderately, stay active, think about your needs in old age before you get there and, if necessary, downsize and move to somewhere more suitable, don’t stick your head in the sand about old age, have a social network, stay mentally active, keep out of hospital if you can (a geriatrician told me that 10 days in hospital is equivalent to 10 years of muscle wasting in elderly people), work for as long as you can, and find what you enjoy and do it.

That is as much as we have control over. Except, knowing all this, we may also want to start voting for a political party that invests in elder care. You know, just in case.