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I received a sad inquiry from a reader recently. He asked if he could call me to discuss his situation. In our call, he told me he was 84 years old and had just been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
“It’s a death sentence. I never thought this would happen to me,” he told me.
I did my best to convey how sorry I was and tried to assist him in any way I could.
But what struck me was his statement that he, “never thought this would happen to me.”
Estimating longevity
Few debate the critical role estimating how long a client will live plays in the financial planning process. According to an article in InvestmentNews, “Lifespan is at the heart of every financial plan, and a misstep could mean the difference between clients’ financial security and running well short of money in retirement.”
But the problem is more complex because some clients, like the person who contacted me, refuse to confront this reality: We don’t know when we are going to die, but death is a certainty for all of us.
When we deny our death, we often avoid planning for it – or even discussing it.
Understanding our denial of death
There’s evidence that the inability to confront our own mortality has a basis in neuroscience.
According to researcher Yair Dor-Ziderman at Bar Ilan University in Israel, who, together with his colleagues, conducted a study on this subject, “The brain does not accept that death is related to us. We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”
Instead of relating death to ourselves, our brain categorizes this information as relevant only to others.
It’s understandable that the person who contacted me was unprepared for his diagnosis. His brain wouldn’t process his own mortality.
Special burden on women
Not only is death a certainty, so is widowhood (which is a gender-neutral term).
However, women are particularly vulnerable to widowhood. Approximately 75% of women will become widows. This isn’t surprising because women tend to outlive men and often marry older men.
Here’s data that shocked me:
The average age of widows is 59 years old, which means many are much younger.
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Only 2% of older widows and 20% of older widowers remarry.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “out of every 1,000 widowed men and women ages 65 and older, only 3 women and 17 men remarry.”
How comprehensive is your financial planning?
Financial planning that is “comprehensive” would take this data into account.
It would encourage candid discussions about the certainty of death and the real possibility of widowhood at an age far earlier that most clients realize.
It wouldn’t be limited to traditional financial planning, which often focuses on the financial aspects of death, like insurance and estate planning.
Unless your planning contemplates the negative physical and mental health ramifications of widowhood, which include “psychological distress, physician visits and institutionalization, and higher rates of morbidity and mortality,” it’s not comprehensive.
Dan trains executives and employees in the lessons based on the research of his latest book, Ask: How to Relate to Anyone. His online video course, Ask: Increase Your Sales. Deepen Your Relationships, is in production.
