While you are still involved in your career as your primary focus you will invariably be working on your long-term financial plan in an effort to prepare for an active retirement and the twilight years that will follow. When you work together with an estate planning professional you are going to be looking at averages when you are projecting costs, and this is the only logical way to proceed. But if you want to use the right numbers you have to drill down a little bit further, look past pure chronological age and consider your health.

We live within an economic system that has been designed to be fueled by growth, but whether or not we are willing to admit it just yet, sustainability it is a factor that has never been allowed for. This is why we had to “reset” the economy recently like starting a new game of Monopoly.

So if you were to find that you really couldn’t expect to see perpetual, sustained economic growth, how could you improve your financial position? You don’t have to be an economics expert to see that the way that you could do that would be to reduce your expenses. If you paid out less and your income stayed the same or grew very modestly you would still be moving forward.

This applies to your health as well. We have recently highlighted the skyrocketing cost of long-term care, with a year in an assisted living facility rising 5.2% from 2009 to 2010 to $39,516 a year. Aside from this, health care costs in general are out of control. How do you address these costs, especially if they continue to rise indefinitely?

One suggestion would be to use the addition by subtraction method and reduce the probability that you will need costly treatments by doing everything possible to stay healthy. Sickness is not necessarily a part of aging; it can be due to an accumulation of negative lifestyle choices that “catch up with you.” You worked hard to build wealth and to do it you learned about self control, discipline, and accountability. Apply these values to your health and recognize the connection between your physical condition and your long-term financial condition.