How to Use Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy in Your Financial Plans

The Default Assumption Problem

Every financial plan has a longevity assumption. In most plans, it is a guess.

eMoney defaults to age 90. MoneyGuide suggests 92. Some advisors pick 95 "to be safe." Others let the client choose — which usually means the client picks a number that feels comfortable, not one grounded in any data.

The problem is not that these defaults are wrong for the average client. The problem is that they are wrong for each specific client. A 68-year-old with well-controlled diabetes and a family history of longevity has a very different planning horizon than a 68-year-old with COPD, a recent cardiac event, and a BMI of 35.

Using the same longevity assumption for both leads to plans that are simultaneously too conservative for one client and too aggressive for another.

What Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy Changes

A health-adjusted life expectancy starts from actuarial mortality tables (the SOA 2015 VBT, the same tables insurance companies use to price policies) and adjusts for the individual's actual health conditions, severity levels, lifestyle factors, family history, and functional status.

The output is not a single number. It includes:

• A central estimate — the mean and median expected age at death
• A 90% confidence interval — the range within which the client's lifespan is very likely to fall (the 5th to 95th percentile from Monte Carlo simulation)
• Planning horizons at four confidence levels — conservative (75th percentile), moderate (50th), expected (mean), and optimistic (25th)
• An SSA baseline comparison — showing how the health-adjusted estimate differs from what the Social Security Administration's generic tables would predict

This is what transforms a longevity guess into an actuarial-grade planning input.

How Longevity Assumptions Compare Across Tools

Most financial planning software either has no longevity personalization at all or offers only a crude approximation. Here is how the major tools compare:

Capability	eMoney	MoneyGuide	RightCapital	Lumis Life
Default LE	Age 90 (firm-set)	Age 90 M / 93 F	Age 90 (firm-set)	Health-adjusted per client
Health personalization	None	3 questions only	None	57 health conditions, severity grading, comorbidity interactions
Mortality tables	Undisclosed	Proprietary	Not disclosed	SOA 2015 VBT + MP-2021
Monte Carlo on lifespan	Population-level only	No (returns only)	No	10,000 simulations per client
Confidence intervals	Single "Confidence Age"	No	No	90% CI, four planning horizons
Per-spouse	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Where to enter LE	Advanced Facts > Assumptions	Goals > Retirement Period	Family Profile > Planning Horizon	"Copy for Planning" button

Planning tools let you enter a longevity assumption but do not help you make an informed one. Lumis Life generates the assumption. The planning tool consumes it.

How to Use Lumis Life Results in Your Financial Plans

The workflow is the same regardless of which planning software you use. It takes about 30 seconds.

Step 1: Run a Longevity Report

From your Lumis Life dashboard, create an assessment and select "Longevity Report" as the report type. Enter the client's demographics and health information. The report runs in seconds.

Step 2: Copy the Planning Assumptions

On the completed report, click the Copy for Planning button in the top-right header (next to Download PDF). This copies a formatted summary to your clipboard that looks like this:

Lumis Life — Planning Assumptions
Client: Jane Smith
Current Age: 68

Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy: Age 86 (18.3 years remaining)
90% Confidence Range: Age 76 – 94

Planning Horizons:
  Conservative (75th %ile): Age 91
  Moderate (50th %ile):     Age 87
  Expected (mean):          Age 86
  Optimistic (25th %ile):   Age 82

SSA Baseline (no health adjustment): Age 84 (16.1 years)
Health Impact: +2.2 years vs SSA baseline

Use the Conservative horizon for income planning, Optimistic for longevity risk.
Generated by Lumis Life (lumislife.com)

Step 3: Enter the Number in Your Planning Tool

Every major financial planning tool lets you override the default longevity assumption. Here is where to find that setting in each.

eMoney Advisor

eMoney defaults to approximately age 90 (firm-configurable) and has no built-in health-adjusted life expectancy calculator. Its Longevity Risk Analysis feature (launched 2021) uses population-level actuarial data without health personalization — which is exactly the gap a Lumis report fills.

There are three places you can enter the Lumis number:

1. Per-client (most common): Open the client record, go to Advanced Facts > Assumptions, and update the Assumed Age of Death field. This is a free-form numeric entry — type any age. Client and spouse each have their own field.
2. Plan-level: In a Retirement Needs Analysis, the Death Age field appears on the "Cost of Your Retirement" page alongside interest rate and amount left to heirs. Enter the Lumis planning horizon here.
3. Firm defaults: Settings > Fact Defaults > Assumptions > Miscellaneous > Retirement & Death sets the default for all new clients. Consider setting this to a reasonable baseline and overriding per-client with Lumis data.

Use the Conservative horizon for income/withdrawal planning (you want income to last at least this long). Use the Optimistic horizon if evaluating whether the client is over-insured. Some advisors run the plan at both horizons to show the client the range of outcomes.

MoneyGuide / MoneyGuidePro

MoneyGuide defaults to age 90 (men) / 93 (women), targeting roughly a 30% survival probability. It has a built-in life expectancy calculator, but it only asks three questions: smoker status, general health, and family health history. Lumis uses 57 health condition profiles with severity grading and Monte Carlo simulation — a fundamentally different level of precision.

1. Open the client plan and navigate to Goals > Retirement Period (or the retirement need section)
2. Each spouse has their own Life Expectancy field — MoneyGuide calculates one from its three questions, but you can override it with any age
3. Replace MoneyGuide's estimate with the Lumis planning horizon
4. Re-run the plan

MoneyGuide's Monte Carlo runs on portfolio returns but uses a single fixed longevity assumption. Pairing it with a health-adjusted LE from Lumis means the plan accounts for uncertainty on both dimensions — investment returns and lifespan.

RightCapital

RightCapital defaults to age 90 (firm-configurable via Advisor Portal > Gear Icon > Client Settings > Client Presets under Plan Parameters).

1. Open the client's profile and go to the Family Profile section
2. Find the Planning Horizon field on the Client Card (and separately on the Co-Client Card for spouses)
3. Click the text box and type the Lumis planning horizon age, or use the calendar picker to set the date
4. The plan automatically recalculates all projections

RightCapital displays a "probability of success" metric. With a health-adjusted planning horizon, that probability becomes more meaningful — it reflects the actual risk of outliving the plan, not the risk of outliving an arbitrary assumption.

Any Other Planning Tool

The pattern is the same for Orion, Advizr, Naviplan, Voyant, or any planning software:

1. Find the longevity or mortality assumption in plan settings
2. Replace the default with the appropriate Lumis planning horizon
3. Re-run the projection

If the tool lets you set different longevity assumptions for each spouse, run individual Lumis reports for each and enter them separately. This is particularly important for joint-and-survivor analysis, pension elections, and Social Security timing.

Which Planning Horizon to Use

The Lumis report provides four planning horizons because different planning decisions call for different confidence levels.

Decision	Use This Horizon	Why
Retirement income / withdrawal rate	Conservative (75th %ile)	You want income to last even in a long-life scenario
Social Security claiming age	Conservative	Delaying claiming pays off more the longer the client lives
Long-term care planning	Conservative	LTC risk increases with age; plan for a longer exposure window
Life insurance needs	Optimistic (25th %ile)	Insurance protects against early death; use the shorter estimate
Pension: single vs joint	Conservative for pension holder, Optimistic for non-pension spouse	Maximizes survivorship protection
Estate planning / trust funding	Expected (mean)	Estate planning benefits from the balanced central estimate
"Am I over-insured?"	Optimistic	If the client is likely to live long, premiums may be better deployed elsewhere

The key principle: use the Conservative horizon when the cost of the client living longer than expected is high (running out of money, outliving insurance). Use the Optimistic horizon when the cost of the client dying sooner than expected is high (dependents left without coverage).

Why This Matters: A Concrete Example

Consider two 65-year-old male clients. Both use eMoney with the default longevity of 90.

Client A has Type 2 diabetes (moderate severity), hypertension, and a BMI of 32. Lumis health-adjusted LE: age 79. Conservative planning horizon: age 84.

Client B is a non-smoker with no major conditions, a BMI of 24, and parents who both lived past 90. Lumis health-adjusted LE: age 89. Conservative planning horizon: age 95.

Using the default age 90 for both clients:

• Client A's plan is designed to last 6 years longer than his Conservative horizon. His withdrawal rate is unnecessarily restrictive. He is underspending in the years he is most likely to be active and healthy.
• Client B's plan is designed to last 5 years shorter than his Conservative horizon. There is a meaningful risk his money runs out. His withdrawal rate is too aggressive.

One client is living too frugally. The other is heading for a shortfall. Both plans look fine on paper because "90" seems reasonable. The personalized longevity estimate reveals what the default hides.

Connecting Your CRM

If you use Redtail, Wealthbox, or another CRM, you can connect it from Dashboard > Settings > Integrations to automatically sync assessment results to your client records. This means:

• When a longevity report completes, a summary is attached to the client's CRM contact as a note
• You can pull client demographics from your CRM to pre-fill assessments
• Your compliance file stays updated without manual data entry

To set up a CRM connection:

1. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Integrations
2. Find your CRM under the available platforms
3. Click Connect and follow the authorization flow
4. Once connected, assessment results sync automatically

Getting Started

If you already have a Lumis Life account, run a longevity report on your next client and try the Copy for Planning workflow. If you notice a material difference between the Lumis estimate and the default your planning tool uses — and you almost certainly will — that difference is the value of personalized longevity in every plan you build.

If you do not have an account yet, you can request access or try the free longevity calculator to see how health factors shift life expectancy from population baselines.