Recent statistics indicate that 50 percent of children born today will live to 100 years old. With this announcement, supported by the medical miracles in extending life far beyond the expectations of our parents and grandparents, comes a dawning revelation: life is changing more rapidly than the planning (and actuarial assumptions) currently provide for.

If, in today's world, 91-year old Diana Athill can write and then publish a best seller called "Somewhere Near the End" - the implicit message is that she expects to be around for a few more years, productively writing prose of quality. She is still a producer of personal revenue, not a reducer of government revenue.

Not everyone will arrive at her age with superior mental capacities, good physical and emotional health while managing to contribute to society as a whole.

Some may parallel her experience in endurance, but in less than the best possible quality of life.

If the recent public wave advocacy of living green by living well has a popular effect, some of the poor living patterns now practised may be reversed, and we will all be writing our biographies, volunteering, working and celebrating life at every age.

Certainly, health insurance companies will welcome this trend if it is adopted, since health pools of chronically sick people are at a greater risk and more expensive to insure than a young (and old) actively vibrant population.

It is conceivable that in order to encourage (rather than control healthy lifestyles), health insurers, possibly local as well global will implement incentive programmes, rewarding those that take individual responsibility for their health.

Conversely, those that persist in self-indulgent detrimental lifestyles will be penalised. Keeping control of your life or giving up control to the state?

Younger generations may dismiss these tomes. This is understandable; it is boring to plan for 40 years away. However, planning for your life is relevant for every life stage. Habits learned early, both good and bad, carry through one's life.

While people do become disadvantaged under circumstances both random and self-fulfilling: bad luck, genetic predispositions, environmental toxic exposures and life accidents, no one, if they can avoid it, wants to end up ceding control of any portion of their life depending upon others for basic daily needs, pharmaceuticals, nursing care and mobility.

How frustrating, how humiliating, how avoidable given that it is within our power to choose to leverage everything within our control for the best possible physical and financial outcomes.

As we progress through this Planning for the End of Life series, the focus will be on the individual, but we are however, very mindful of the cost and effect on our taxpayers and society. The 65-year-old of today is capable of living 35 more years. He/she will certainly seek to minimise expenses by joining programmes such as Future Care. The projected cost to the government (and the rest of us) to insure just one individual for that many years is staggering and will be discussed in more depth later in the series.

A second scenario, unheard of years ago, is the onset of very early Alzheimer / dementia conditions in individuals as young as 40 years old. Imagine being the healthy partner coping with young children, a career and a very mentally ill, but physically well, non-financially contributing partner who may exist in this state of suspended reality for more than 50 percent of his/her life.

These situations are warning signs that the health care costs of our human population will only continue to outpace inflation, normal everyday living budgets and governmental subsidy programmes.

A discussion of personal health care management is not complete without considering the financial decisions that should always be in place to anticipate these contingencies: Legal and estate financial documents such as wills, Guardianship and Power Of Attorney, Advance care directives, titling and Protection of property and assets, meeting financial needs of the survivor, government programmes, if available, and professional resources.

These are difficult topics, not the most pleasing to read on a relaxing weekend with your family. We humans tend to deny or avoid the unpleasant until it happens.

You can't control everything, but planning for all phases of your life as enthusiastically as living in the now, eliminates stress, promotes good financial management and actually prolongs quality of life.

Martha Harris Myron CPA/PFS CFP(US) TEP(UK) JP is a Certified Financial Planner Practitioner in Hamilton, Bermuda. She specialises in fee-only cross-border planning: tax, retirement, estate, and strategic services for Bermuda residents with United States connections, multinational mobile families and US citizens living abroad. For more information, contact martha.myrongmail.com or 441-735-4720.