Should Your VO2 Max Alter your Retirement Plan?

You people are obsessed. Protein intake. Lipid panels. BMI. Heart-rate monitors. Sleep scores. Humble-bragging about your VO2 max!

Truth is, I'm just as bad. Alexandra and I went through our last round of lab results line by line - so thoroughly that I spent an hour with AI building a trend analysis of my own bloodwork going back years. We take the supplements. We work out more than we ever have. Last week we joined a new gym. Like most of us at this phase, we are thinking about healthy longevity.

And there are some pretty good technology tailwinds behind all this effort. Early detection is improving. Medicine continues to get better at treating diseases that shortened the lives of previous generations. Many of us have a reasonable chance of living considerably longer than our parents and grandparents planned for.

So let's say it works.

If I live to 100, I boldly predict that I will see the Aggies win a national championship and I will travel beyond Earth's orbit. I'll let you decide which is the long shot.

I'll make one more prediction, and this one I'm considerably more confident about: The math of retirement is going to change.

Living longer puts more financial pressure on retirement, not less. The benefits of healthy choices are largely deferred: you skip the immediate pleasure of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla or endure the rowing machine for the sake of having a capable body ten or twenty years from now. Financial decisions work much the same way.

The difference is that the mirror, the scale and your joints provide daily feedback about your health. Retirement-planning gaps can remain invisible for years. If optimizing your VO2 max so you can still run a 10K at 95 is worth some attention, the financial implications of getting there probably deserve some attention too.

The longer the potential lifespan, the more resilient the financial plan needs to be.

Seven Financial Markers of Longevity

Think about the last time your bloodwork came back with something flagged. You looked at the number, looked at the range and probably did something about it. That's because you understood the consequences. There are financial markers worth watching too.

MARKER 1 | Funding horizon

Start working at 22 and retire at 65 and you have 43 years of earning. Live to 100 and you have 35 years of retirement. That is an awfully long period to support from the assets, benefits and financial decisions accumulated over a working lifetime. For a married couple, the planning horizon may need to be longer still because the plan has to account for the possibility that either spouse lives well beyond average life expectancy.

I don't know what that means for you personally. It might mean working longer, spending less, saving more, delaying Social Security, managing certain risks with insurance, or structuring investments differently. There are plenty of levers, but first you have to do the math.

A good retirement cash-flow projection should make the gaps visible while you still have time to do something about them.

MARKER 2 | Withdrawal rate

This is the LDL of the retirement plan - the number most likely to come back flagged when you extend the longevity assumption.

For illustration, take a $1 million portfolio earning exactly 6% every year in a world with 3% annual inflation. If retirement lasts 25 years, the portfolio could support an initial withdrawal of roughly $59,000, increased by 3% each year, before exhausting the portfolio at the end of the period. Stretch that same calculation to 35 years and the initial withdrawal falls to roughly $47,000.

Same portfolio. Same return. Same inflation. You just lived ten years longer.

Of course, actual markets do not return 6% in a straight line. Taxes, fees and sequence-of-returns risk matter enormously. This isn't a recommended withdrawal rate; it is simply an illustration of what adding ten years does to the arithmetic.

Sometimes when I use 35-year assumptions in retirement projections, clients think I'm being overly conservative. I'm not.

MARKER 3 | Care exposure

We all plan on aging gracefully. It's why we eat kale and do cold plunges. Reality may be less cooperative.

A study published recently in The Lancet Public Health examined the difference between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy across 204 countries and territories. The researchers found that gains in survival have generally outpaced gains in healthy years. The United States had the largest estimated gap: 14 years.

Fourteen years of life, on average, affected by illness or disability. That should matter to a retirement plan. One spouse may eventually need substantial physical care. Cognitive decline may create an entirely different set of needs. And in many marriages, one spouse will spend some portion of retirement helping care for the other.

Most people my age are already watching some version of this with their parents. It isn't theoretical. The question isn't whether you can predict precisely what care will look like thirty years from now. You can't.

By 2065 there may be a remarkably capable Jetsons-like robot spoon-feeding me Blue Bell. I have no idea what that robot will cost. The objective is to preserve enough financial flexibility that the plan can absorb whatever replaces today's version of long-term care.

MARKER 4 | Housing

If you live to 100, how long are you going to live in your house? Suppose it's another 35 years. That's a roof or two, a couple of HVAC systems, several water heaters and, because this is Texas, let's throw in the possibility of a foundation event.

Eventually there may also be renovations that have nothing to do with taste and everything to do with mobility: wider doorways, a walk-in shower, a first-floor bedroom, ramps or perhaps a lift. Over several decades, maintenance and adaptation can easily become a six-figure cumulative expense.

Yet I rarely see a separate line on a retirement plan labeled: "Keep the house functional until age 100." There probably should be one.

MARKER 5 | Decision-making capacity

A 35-year retirement means that a meaningful portion of your financial life may be managed by the version of you who is in their eighties or nineties. Financial decisions don't necessarily become simpler with age. Our capacity to make them might deminish.

Good old-fashioned estate planning matters here. Name a successor decision-maker. Simplify the portfolio before circumstances force you to. Execute a durable power of attorney while it is routine paperwork instead of a crisis.

Then look again at the people you named as trustee, executor and agent. If you completed those documents fifteen years ago, there is a decent chance you appointed someone roughly your own age. Your longevity plan may outlive them too.

MARKER 6 | Inheritance timing

Our industry talks constantly about the coming generational wealth transfer. Longevity could change its timing considerably. If parents routinely live into their nineties, children may not inherit wealth until they themselves are retired. Grandchildren could be well into middle age.

At the same time, a long retirement can produce two dramatically different outcomes. If withdrawals consistently push the limits of the portfolio, there may be very little left. But if investment returns are good and spending remains modest relative to resources, decades of compounding can create substantial wealth.

Most families I work with aren't particularly excited about either extreme: barely making it to the finish line or discovering at 95 that they accumulated far more than they could ever use. They want secure income for life. But if they have more than they will reasonably need, they also want their resources to have an impact on their children, grandchildren and communities.

If the money is eventually going somewhere, when should it go?

Knowing early that you're on a path toward substantial excess wealth creates options: helping family during your lifetime, funding education, giving to charity or simply spending more on experiences while you can enjoy them together. That's a much better problem to identify at 65 than at 95.

MARKER 7 | Market tolerance

A retirement lasting 30 or 35 years will almost certainly include multiple bear markets, recessions and stretches when the financial world appears to be coming apart. Strangely, I think this may be the most encouraging marker on the panel.

A long horizon gives an investor something extraordinarily valuable: time. But time only helps if the financial plan gives the portfolio enough flexibility to survive the bad periods.

A falling market combined with a forced sale is a particularly damaging combination. The objective isn't to build a portfolio that never declines. Such a portfolio doesn't exist. It's to build a financial structure that makes it less likely you'll be forced to sell long-term assets at precisely the wrong time.

The Other Side of Longevity

I genuinely think it's great that so many of us are increasingly tuned into, and occasionally obsessive about, our health. God willing, all that effort pays dividends and we live longer, healthier and more capable lives because of it.

But longevity has another side. A longer life means more years of spending, more inflation, more market cycles, more home maintenance, more chances for expensive care and more years in which someone has to competently manage the money. None of that is a reason to be pessimistic about living longer. Quite the opposite.

You don't need to predict whether you'll live to 100. You need a financial plan that still works if you do.

Maybe that's worth obsessing over just a little bit too.

The contents of this article are for educational purposes only. Nothing is meant to be specific financial, tax, or investment advice, and you should consult with a professional before taking any action based on this material.