The paradox of living longer

Peter Thiel said something very interesting to me the other day … he said people think they are going to live forever but they live like they are going to die tomorrow.

What a paradox.

People think they are going to live a very long time … and their right. But most people are borrowing from their future self to live in the now. They’re unprepared for the future and their not calculating their odds correctly.

Thiel points out that most people are severely undercounting how long they will live. And if you want a good investment strategy, you should go long on people’s life and short people who think they will die soon. Thiel points out that the most successful investor of our age, Warren Buffett, is doing just that. Buffett has loaded up on life insurance companies … which do very well if people live longer and don’t calculate their odds of dying correctly.