SCOTS are endangering their financial security in retirement by underestimating how long they live, new research has found.
It revealed that 48 per cent of people living in Scotland only expect to live to the same age as their parents, while 10 per cent predicted they'd live even shorter lives. Despite this, a third think their offspring will live longer than they will.
Yet according to Life Trust Insurance, which commissioned the research, the average 40-year-old Scotsman has more than a one-in-three chance of living to 90, and a 4 per cent chance of reaching their century. Even more impressively, a 40-year-old woman in Scotland has a better than 50 per cent chance of surviving beyond 90 and a 10 per cent chance of living until 100. And with improving standards of health and medical diagnostics, this trend is set to continue.
In Scotland, the average age of death is 74.6 for a man and 79.6 for a woman, compared with 76.9 and 81.3 respectively for the UK as a whole. This is up from Scottish averages ten years ago of 71.9 and 77.5.
But such low expectations of longevity could have dire financial consequences when it comes to maintaining an income in retirement, said Andy Briscoe, chief executive of Life Trust. "With so many people in Scotland underestimating how long they will live, they are leaving themselves in danger of being short of cash in their later years just as they face declining income and increasing costs."
The full article contains 267 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
