Live long and prosper


I just read about a report by Dr. Ephrem Cheng that clearly proves that the longer we work, the sooner we die.

Boeing Aerospace was wondering why its pension fund was “over funded”. So, Dr. Cheng looked into it and discovered that “late retirees” were dying too soon to fully reap the pensions that they had owing to them.

With 158,000 employees in 70 countries, Boeing gave Dr. Cheng a huge sample to draw solid conclusions from. He looked at files that told him when employees retired, and when they ceased to get their pension cheques.

He found that if a person retires at the age of 49.9, they tend to live to the age of 86. If they retire at 65.2, they tend to die 17 months later.

That’s right: 17 months later, when they are 66.8 years old; not 17 years later when they reasonably expect to die.

And these are averages, so you know that many retirees die sooner than their 17 months are up.

This is important to know. My wife turns 50 in August (sorry, Honey, but none of our friends read these anyway) and she has already decided to retire next year.

So, according to Dr. Cheng, she is now expected to live to the age of 86.

Me? I’m one of those weirdos who really, really likes to work. So, I’m going to work until I am 60. That means I should live to the age of 76.8.

Looking down the list of numbers, you can determine that for every year you work past the age of 55, you lose two years from your life.

This is not the scary news, because, you now have this information. Go ahead, verify it and make your own decisions.

The scary part is that large corporations and governments already know this. They’ve been teaching it universities for decades now. Indeed, this information was long ago compared with similar observations by Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Bell Labs and Ford Motor. They each arrived at the same conclusion.

So, when your employer says to you, “If you work for another five years, we’ll give you more pension money,” the truth is, no, they probably won’t, because you will likely die 10 years sooner.

In defence of these companies, if you pay into a pension fund five years less than the next guy, you really should get less money each month.

And people who can retire at 50 tend to have the financial wherewithal to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Even so, I’m just saying, if the pension manager knows of this study and they don’t tell you (and you really have to assume that someone in that department does know … especially when an insurance company knows how long you will live based on a questionnaire that is filled out in five minutes) then they are gambling with your life for the benefit of the company by keeping you around longer.

And, quite literally, using you up.


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