Living To 100...How Long Will You Live?

Thomas Perls MD, MPH is the founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians and their families in the world. Dr. Perls has constructed the "Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator," which is available for free. Answers to the calculator questions can be provided to obtain a helpful gauge life expectancy and health-related behaviors.

The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator uses the most current and carefully researched medical and scientific data in order to estimate how old you will live to be. Most people score in their late eighties... how about you?

The calculator asks you 40 quick questions related to your health and family history, and takes about 10 minutes to complete. At the end, you will be asked to create an account to store your answers.

Click here to go to the calculator.

My personal life expectancy per the calculator...99 years. Grandpa Kroskey turned 98 in June. Need to put some more money in the 401k...

Cheers,

Kevin Kroskey, CFP(r), MBA

Diversification: Disciplinarian of Disciplinarians

Disciplined diversification works when you do and even when you don't want it to. Diversification in effect forces you to sell the thing that has been doing so well in your portfolio and to buy the thing that hasn't. While this makes rational sense, it is emotionally difficult to execute. Think back to the tail end of 2008--were you selling bonds and cash to buy stocks? Most likely you weren't unless your advisor or some sort of automatic trigger did it for you. Carl Richards of www.behaviorgap.com provided a good reminder of how diversification works in a recent NY Times blog post. The diversification he discusses here is more so related to equity asset-class diversification but also touches on the three basic building blocks--equities, bonds, and cash. He doesn't discuss alternative asset classes -- an asset class that doesn't fit neatly into the three basic categories -- being used to further diversification, but that's a detailed topic for another day. ...

Did You Do as Well as Your Mutual Fund?

It's common practice to look at a fund's total return number for a snapshot of what performance to expect, but that won't give you the full picture. Morningstar studies have shown that investors' actual gains frequently pale in comparison to reported total return numbers. This phenomenon frequently plays out among funds that attract assets after streaks of hot performance, only to see some investors get skittish at the first signs of underperformance . After a moment's though, even a novice investor will realize that this behavior is just the opposite of the mantra -- buy low and sell high. This practice can be more broadly attributed to bad behavior and lack of a plan or philosophy when it comes to investing. Investors are human and humans are emotional. As much as the logician in me would like to believe my left brain is working to drive my decision making, logic comes in after emotions are experienced to provide context for how we are feeling and not the other ...

Healthcare Reform Explained

If you're like me, you find the 1000 page plus Heathcare Reform Act a bit confusing. This nine minute animated movie -- featuring the "YouToons" -- explains the problems with the current health care system, the changes that are happening now, and the big changes coming in 2014, produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Kevin Kroskey, CFP, MBA

Kevin Kroskey's Money & Mind

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