Let's take a look:

First of all, I'm doing this because I found a story that talks about something Brian and I have talked about in the past. When planning for retirement, having a good estimate as to how long you'll live is the most important thing of all. After all, if you think you'll die relatively young, perhaps in your 60's or 70's and you plan for that retirement and you live into your 80's or 90's, that could be a bad second half of the retirement without enough money to get by on, right?

So I'm reading this story and it points to a site you can go to to caluclate how long you'll live based on answering about 40 questions. The site is www.livingto100.com and the survey is fairly quick and easy. There really aren't any tough or trick questions.

So I went and took the survey. Now keep in mind, my mother died at age 54 and my father died at age 51. That would lead someone to think I would die at an early age. But their early deaths, I don't believe, have any relation to heredity or any relation to me. That's because both of them led an unhealthy lifestyle and both smoked cigarettes(many) up until the day they died. Nonetheless, it would lead you to think I wouldn't be living to a ripe old age.

Well after taking the survey, the site calculated how long I'm going to live and it said...ready for this? 86. Now I still don't think I'm going to live that long unless I start pumping up the exercise more than I have lately. But imagine my surprise thinking I was only going to live until sometime in my early to mid 70's.

My retirement planning was about me those. That's because I'm 64(65 this year) and my wife is 56(57 this year). So all my retirement planning is about her not me. Because of the age difference, unless some tragic disease or accident befalls her, she'll outlive me by many years so the planning is about when she's going to die, not me. That's why I'm going to have her take the test as well.

But I'll tell you this...if that test has any validity to it, I am really shocked. I've got to sit down an possibly do some re-calculating on my retirement planning, especially after we get the results on my wife.

Conclusion: Fact