Thought Experiment That Has Made Me Start Questioning Everything I Do And Spend Money On

Disclaimer: I know nothing about medicine, but the very smart person who recently brought this up to me is a doctor. So, therefore, I will blindly assume that this could happen.

It’s possible that over the next few decades, we’ll figure out how to extend the healthy human lifespan to, say, 200 years. If that’s true, then the first humans to live to 200 are alive today.

There are also humans alive today who will just barely miss the window.

And making that window could mean far more than just celebrating 100 extra birthdays. The people who live to 200 buy themselves time for research to get even further and extend life to, say, 500 years. Then to 1,000. Then, forever.

So, if you stay alive long enough to hit the 200-year window, it’s possible that you’ll end up living far longer, or never dying.

Unfortunately, brand new medical treatments are usually expensive at first. So, even if you stay alive long enough to hit the 200-year window, you’ll have to get together some large stacks to pay the bill.

It follows, then, that people should:

• Live as healthy a life as possible so they don’t die before the window

• Save that cash

This has scared me into moderately improving my spending and lifestyle habits. Unfortunately, it hasn’t scared me enough to not eat three small-plate-sized cookies yesterday or cancel the $14 per month I spend for YouTube Red solely for the ability to play videos in the background instead of auto-pausing.

Young people, be warned: those Tide Pods could cost you your shot at immortality.