What living longer means for your money

Living longer can complicate your finances, but there are ways to navigate those risks, says Merryn Somerset Webb

Older couple with car living longer but can make it hard to manage money
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In 1990 there were a mere 95,000 centenarians in the world (that we knew of). Now there are more than 500,000. That’s partly a function of a fast-growing population, of course – there were more births in 1925 than in 1890. But it is also one of rapidly rising lifespans. Over the last 100 years, life expectancy has gone up by a couple of years every decade. 

The Office for National Statistics’ life-expectancy calculator (well worth a visit if you need a boost) will tell you that a 60-year-old man today is most likely to live to be 85, and has a 3.5% chance of hitting 100. For a 60-year-old woman, the respective figures are 87 and 6.2%. 

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.