Longevity & Wealth Planning Methodology

Hazard Curve bridges actuarial mortality tables, clinical epidemiology, and personal capital accumulation into a single simulation engine designed for wealth managers, family offices, and advisors.

Traditional financial planning treats life expectancy as a single static number ("plan to age 90"). In reality, lifespan is a dynamic distribution driven by daily habits, biological aging constraints, and the capital required to access future medical breakthroughs.

Core Objective: Answer two questions for an individual:

"How many additional years do my current habits add?"
"Will I have enough capital to afford life-extending technologies when they arrive?"

2. Actuarial Baseline (SSA Cohort Tables)

SSA 2020

Every projection starts with official U.S. Social Security Administration cohort mortality tables, which give the empirical annual probability of death at each age from 18 to 119 for both men and women.

How Baseline Survival Works:

Your chance of surviving to any future age is the compounding probability of surviving each individual year along the way. If your risk of death at age 50 is 0.4%, your survival rate that year is 99.6%. The model chains these year-by-year.

This anchors the model in real population data before any personalized adjustments.

3. Gompertz Hazard Curve & Frontier Drift

Human mortality follows Gompertz's Law: beyond age 30, the chance of death roughly doubles every 7 to 8 years. But at extreme ages (100+), the acceleration slows into a mortality plateau.

Late-Age Risk Cap (Plateau): Caps the maximum single-year mortality risk past the empirical frontier age. At 60%, annual risk never exceeds that ceiling, even beyond 100, matching observed supercentenarian data.
Frontier Age Drift: The maximum survival boundary extends by 15 days per calendar year by default, reflecting secular gains in critical care, surgery, and public health.

4. The "Winning Hand" Principle

Core Innovation

A common flaw in longevity calculators is additive stacking: if running cuts risk 30%, sauna 20%, and walking 25%, a naive model adds them to 75% total reduction. Stack enough habits and you become immortal, which is biologically impossible.

In reality, physiological systems share pathways. If your cardiovascular system is already optimized through intense exercise, sauna adds minimal additional vascular protection.

Rule: Within each physiological bucket, only your single strongest active habit counts.

Bucket	Candidate Habits	Base HR	Mechanism
Cardiovascular	Frequent Exercise Daily Movement Frequent Sauna	0.68x / 0.72x / 0.77x	VO2 max, arterial compliance, stroke volume
Metabolic	Caloric Restriction Mediterranean Diet Low Sugar / Fiber	0.75x / 0.77x / 0.85x	Insulin sensitivity, glycemic control
Recovery & Neuro	Consistent Sleep Meditation	0.88x / 0.93x	Glymphatic clearance, cortisol regulation
Cellular Repair	Supplements Cold Plunge Red-Light Therapy	0.95x / 0.96x / 0.98x	Mitochondrial biogenesis, hormesis

Adherence Scaling

Logarithmic (Recommended): The first 50% of consistency delivers most of the benefit. Going from 90% to 100% adherence adds diminishing returns, mirroring biology.

Linear: Benefit scales evenly with adherence (50% adherence = 50% of the risk reduction).

Within each category, only your highest-performing habit carries. Three cardio exercises won't triple your score.

5. Multiplicative Toxic Risk Stacking

Compounding

While healthy habits have diminishing returns, toxins compound. Smoking damages blood vessels; alcohol stresses the liver and heart. Together, they multiply mortality risk rather than capping at the worst one.

Rule: Harmful exposures are multiplicative, not winning-hand. They attack different systems simultaneously.

Example: Smoking (2.5x) + Heavy Drinking (1.35x) = 3.38x annual mortality risk, not 2.5x.

Heavy Smoking: 2.50x (vascular, oncological, pulmonary damage)
Heavy Drinking: 1.35x (cardiomyopathy, hepatic failure)
Poor Air Quality: 1.10x (chronic PM2.5 inflammation)

6. BMI Hazard Curve

BMI follows a U-shaped mortality curve. Lowest risk sits at BMI 22.5 (1.0x baseline).

Above 25: Risk rises as excess weight increases cardiovascular strain, insulin resistance, and inflammation.

Below 18.5: Risk also spikes due to frailty, muscle loss, and weakened immune response.

7. Scientific Discovery Tiers

Stochastic

Future breakthroughs arrive as probabilistic events over calendar time, not on a fixed schedule. Three tiers:

Tier 1: Better Meds

$12,000

+0.7 years

Safer GLP-1s, next-gen statins, liquid biopsy screening.

Tier 2: Disease Cures

$550,000

+2.5 years

CAR-T solid tumors, Alzheimer's plaque clearing.

Tier 3: Age Reversal

$2,400,000

+7.0 years

Cellular reprogramming, tissue engineering, organ replacement.

Each tier's annual arrival probability ramps up over time as scientific momentum builds.

Discovery does not guarantee access. You can only adopt a treatment if your portfolio covers the inflation-adjusted cost at that age.

8. Wealth Compounding & Healthcare Inflation

Your portfolio runs in parallel with your biological lifespan. Each year:

1. Growth: Investments compound at your expected real return (e.g. 5%).

2. Savings: Annual income contributions are added (growing with wage inflation).

3. Health Costs: Routine habit expenses (gym, supplements, organic food) are deducted.

4. Breakthroughs: If a medical cure arrives, its inflation-adjusted price is deducted.

The Trade-off: Overspending on low-ROI interventions today erodes compound growth, potentially locking you out of high-impact cures arriving in your 70s and 80s.

9. Deterministic vs. Monte Carlo

Expected Lifespan (Deterministic)

The mathematical average outcome. Assumes normal survival rates year after year with no random shocks. Ideal for baseline financial projections.

Range of Possibilities (Monte Carlo)

Simulates 1,000 to 20,000 parallel lifetimes. Rolls the dice each year to reveal your 90% confidence window, from worst-case (P5) to best-case (P95) outcomes.

10. Forest Plot & Attribution Analysis

To isolate the impact of a single habit, the engine runs a counterfactual loop:

Temporarily disable one habit, resetting it to neutral.
Re-run the full simulation without it.
The difference reveals the exact years gained or lost from that single choice.

Results are visualized in the interactive Forest Plot on a logarithmic hazard ratio scale, showing both relative risk and absolute life-years gained or lost per factor.