With many clients moving from the asset-accumulation stage of life to living off the income from those assets, one question comes sharply into focus: will your client have enough money to last his or her lifetime?

Although you can help working clients calculate the number of years until retirement, and from there deduce how much they need to save to reach their retirement goals, figuring out how much they should withdraw and spend once they are living off their wealth is fraught with guesswork. What will inflation be? What about investment returns? Most important, how long will the client live?

While it probably is safest to assume a longer life, a variety of online calculators are springing up to assess clients’ potential life expectancies.

One of the most popular calculators was developed by Tom Perls, a medical doctor and associate professor of medicine and geriatrics at Boston University Medical Center and author of Living to 100: Lessons in living to your maximum potential at any age.

Since the recent publication of an article in USA Weekend, more than one million people have taken Perls’ longevity test to estimate how long they might live. If you or your clients want to find out your score on this test, go to www.livingto100.-com for people under the age of 50, or to www.eons.com if you are 50 or older. The site asks for various pieces of information when you sign on, including a zip code (I used the zip code of a U.S. friend, as my Canadian postal code didn’t work).

After answering Perls’ 60 questions, which took about 15 minutes, the online calculator came back with the conclusion that I will live to the ripe old age of 95. While this kind of prediction is not an exact science, when I sit down with my advisor to assess my retirement possibilities I will be anticipating that I have to support myself to at least 95, with maybe another five years thrown in for good measure.

WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL

Perls believes that many of the factors that influence how long we live are within our control, and his questions encompass such areas as personal lifestyle, financial stability, drinking habits, preventative care, exercise, sleep, dental health and the ability to handle emotional problems. Specific topics include the air quality where you live, use of a car seat belt, propensity to drink coffee or tea, and how often you take aspirin, eat red meat and use sunscreen. Risky sexual behaviour and the use of illegal drugs also come up. Other questions touch on barbecuing, bowel movements, the health history of parents and grandparents, and self-examination for skin, breast or testicular cancers.

With Perls’ quiz, everyone starts with a base age — 86 for men and 89 for women, because women tend to live longer — and the answers to the questions increase or decrease your score. At the end of the quiz, an analysis of the answers tells how to improve your score and add years to your life by changing some habits.

For example, exercising 30 minutes a day, five days a week, adds six years to your score. Flossing your teeth every day reduces toxic bacteria in the bloodstream that cause plaques and heart disease, and adds half a year, as does having a bowel movement at least once every two days. Living near a caring family can also add half a year to your score, as can taking an aspirin every day to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. Cutting back sweets in your diet to once or twice a week can add half a year to life expectancy. Cutting out red meat, a primary source of life-shortening iron, can add two years to your life in Perls’ quiz.

Regular brain-strengthening activities such as doing crosswords, playing Scrabble or learning a musical instrument can add two years. Obesity can reduce your score by seven years, and inability to manage stress can reduce it by another five years.

Perls’ research on centenarians has found that people who do not belong to supportive families have fewer coping resources and increased levels of social and psychological stress. Stress is associated with heart disease and various cancers.

While Perls’ research found 100% of male centenarians are married or only recently widowed, marriage for women does not necessarily provide a distinct survival advantage. About 15% of women centenarians had never been married. Perls speculates that traits such as perseverance, independence, assertiveness and ability to build emotional support networks beyond marriage may underlie their survival advantage.

@page_break@GREEN TEA PREFERABLE

I was surprised when my personal analysis from Perls congratulated me for not drinking coffee. My report says excessive coffee is associated with higher stress levels, which can lead to hormonal imbalance and physical stress on numerous organs.

In addition, coffee predisposes the stomach to chronic inflammation and ulcers, leading to the release of substances that increase heart disease. Tea, on the other hand — especially green tea — contains antioxidants that decrease your risk of heart disease and cancer.

Perls’ analysis of my answers also went into detail on my meat consumption, saying less meat means less risk of heart attack and stroke, and it’s good practice to replace some red-meat meals with vegetables, fish or skinless poultry. The analysis says the vascular risk associated with red meat might be related to the fact that it is a major source of iron in the diet. Iron encourages the ability of our cells to produce harmful free radicals that can lead to illness and accelerate aging. Likewise, taking an iron supplement — unless it is recommended for specific health purposes — can actually be bad for your health.

A search of the Internet and a number of calls to insurance companies in Canada didn’t turn up any equivalent Canadian quizzes for the public, although most life insurance companies use questionnaires and physical examinations to assess longevity.

Insurers also want to know details about lifestyle, such as smoking habits or tendency to engage in dangerous occupations such as sky-diving or motorcycle riding.

I did, however, find a fun Longevity Game on the Web site of Wisconsin-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. (www.-nmfn.com/tn/learnctr–lifeevents–longevity), on which I scored a life expectancy of 98 years. IE