Monday 23 November 2009

Over / Under 53


From an article on SmartMoney.com comes this worrying piece:

It may be depressing to think about, but a soon-to-be published paper on money and aging argues that while our experience and accumulated wisdom make us smarter for a while, this effect is ultimately swamped as our minds begin to decline with age. The tension between these two forces means that the sharpness of our financial decision making rises and then falls over the course of a lifetime, like an upside-down U.

The authors of the paper even put a number on the peak of that upside down U: 53.

That's the age, on average, where people's increasing experience begins to be outweighed by the inexorable deterioration of all parts of the human body -- including, of course, the brain. As the baby boom generation heads toward retirement, there will never have been so many people with so much accumulated wealth heading into such an extended period of cognitive decline.

I need to make the most of the next four months, although as with many other disagreeable statistics, I assume they apply only to other people, not to myself.

3 comments:

Eddy said...

nice post.

Rob The Builder. said...

I won't be following your footy tips after March then.

Anonymous said...

Damn right statistics apply to other people; now 64 and as agile with the math as I ever was. You just have to keep the grey cells on the go.
Cheers,
Stu.