Robert Brokamp

Most would like to see their standard of living improve over a five-year span.

Thus, they feel like they're falling behind.

End of quote.

And now the number of the week, which is 67.8.

That was the average age of death of Boeing employees who retired at age 65, whereas employees who retired at age 55 lived to 83.

In other words, retire sooner, live longer.

There's only one problem.

It's not true.

These stats come from a graphic that has been passed around the internet for a long time, including recently, but it was debunked more than 20 years ago.

Retirement expert Michael Finca recently wrote an article about it for the website ThinkAdvisor, and with the help of fellow researcher David Blanchett, looked at the actual relationship between retirement and life expectancy.

Using the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study, they looked at the retirement status of participants in 2012 and what percentage were still alive a decade later.

However, it's important to take health into account because many people retire sooner due to health issues, which can also result in them dying sooner.

So Finca and Blanchett also factored in the participants' self-assessed health status, which is actually a surprisingly good predictor of how long people will live.

The results were the complete opposite of that made-up graphic about Boeing employees.

Finca and Blanchett found that people who continued working lived longer than those of the same age who had retired.

The difference was the largest for those in fair or poor health, but even workers in great health were more likely to live longer than healthy retirees.

Next up, how to analyze the health of your portfolio when Motley Fool Money continues.

It's almost 2026, and soon you'll be receiving your year-end statements from all your investment accounts.

You'll also hear a lot of advice about reviewing and rebalancing your portfolio in January.

But how should you do it?