Preparing for death: Have a plan to face your mortality

ONCE upon a time, in a more naive world, we accepted there were two certainties: Death and taxes. 

To our cost, we know now that only one of those stands. That contemporary alchemy — “aggressive tax planning” — has made one of fate’s twins optional. Death, however, retains its bite.

Science has, nevertheless, deferred death in an unprecedented way. We live longer. A boy born this week can expect to reach something around 76 years of age; a girl can hope to live five years longer. Those are the official figures but gerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes “a decisive level of medical control” over the travails of ageing makes it possible that someone alive today will live to be 150 — double the official expectation. Not only are we living longer but the proportion of old people is rising dramatically and will grow even faster in decades to come. There are 540,000 or so people aged over 65 in Ireland, 12% of the population. This figure will hit 1.4m — 22% — by 2041. The changes predicted for the cohort 80 and over are more dramatic. The number of people in that bracket is expected to rise from 130,600 to 458,000 — an increase of 250%. An ageing population of this scale is unprecedented and our social, cultural, and psychological mindsets seem unprepared. Set against the looming pension crisis maybe that should be rephrased as “dangerously unprepared”.