How long did you plan on living when you put together your retirement plan?  We put in age 90.  That seemed like a good input at the time, even though most people don’t make it that far. Research shows that about 25% of American men and 33% of women aged 65 live to 90 years old, but a majority fall short.

Of course, as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Regular reader & commenter Klaus W. recently sent me an article that suggests that the world’s fitness, nutrition, and medical knowledge has gotten us to the point where living longer – much, much longer – is about to become commonplace. 

He shared a link to this interesting PRESENTATION that lays out all of the advances coming our way.

These include new longevity drugs like ‘Metaforin’ & ‘Thymosin Alpha 1’ that can slow aging, fight cancer, and improve immunity. How insights into 400 year-old sharks has prompted work on DNA ‘Repair Genes’ and a field called ‘Cellular Reprogramming’. Apparently Silicon Valley billionaires like Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos are pouring huge amounts of money into this research, with an audacious goal to “conquer death”.

I can’t claim to understand it all, but in addition to these technological breakthroughs, the presentation also emphasizes the simple steps we can all take now, such as daily exercise / walking, eating a Mediterranean diet, and taking 2,000 IU/day of highly-beneficial Vitamin D.

I’m not sure how I might restructure our retirement plans / portfolio if living to 100 suddenly became commonplace. I’m guessing the simplest thing to do would be to increase our exposure to equities (vs bonds) in order to take advantage of the longer investment window. Still, that comes with risk in the short-term. Since we have been running pretty far ahead of our plans in our first 10 years of retirement, I think we’ll just stand pat and see what life brings us.

How optimistic are you about new ‘super-longevity’ breakthroughs? Will we benefit from them in our lifetimes?

Image: Pixabay