Taking the Long View of Life

Consider a married couple planning the financial aspects of their retirement. What is the retirement value of one spouse to the other? Each spouse has a lifetime commitment to the well-being of the other. Together they plan their learning years, their earning years, their retiring years, their dying years, and their after-death years. But their individual needs are not the same since women can expect to live longer than men. Therefore, in what follows, we consider the woman's outlook.

Would you believe, for example, that the financial retirement value of her spouse is $2,572,990.40 or $57,177.56 for each of their earning years?