Whether you're happy or not about a decision doesn't change the math.

You keep talking about the math. Did you actually read the NBER paper? If you did you would have found a table that discusses the increase in discretionary spending vs age at death. That very precise $182370 increase in spending assumes that you are currently between age 45 and 62 and that you live to be 100. Was that in your original post? I don't think so.

If you look at the "All Households" line of that table (Table 29 for those of you who have a copy of the study), you would see that if your maximum age of life is 80, your total increase in discretionary spending is $4535. That's it. Less than $5k. If you live to 85, the increase is ~$25k. Living to 90? $57k. 95? $85k. Even were you to live to 100 in the "All Households" category you would see $116k increase.

So until you are willing to accept that the foolishly precise $182370 is for an extremely optimistic living to 100 scenario then yammering on about "the math" is just noise.

Rgds,
HH/Sean

p.s. Jim has on several occasions discussed how to deal with longevity risk, including tontines and deferred annuities. That is a worthy discussion but should be separate from this one.

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