To effectively plan for your retirement, experts say, you need to watch your savings rate and total nest egg.
But how much you really need to have set aside depends on another number — your life expectancy.
Yet that figure is also the most elusive — no one knows how long they will live.
“Nobody really knows, and that uncertainty is uncomfortable,” said Lisa Schilling, director of practice research at the Society of Actuaries Research Institute, the research arm of the Society of Actuaries.
The financial industry typically uses age 95 as a default assumption, according to research from HealthView Services, a provider of health-care cost projection software.
