<prompt> Human: Theres a 14 chance that I and all males my age wont be around to fully benefit from the money we put in our 401ks and other investments for retirement. Should that 14 chance play any role in the math I use in determining how much of my income I should put away for retirement in my 401k, or any other investments for retirement.Lets assume that I dont care about loved ones inheriting the money when I die and all I care about is maximising how my income will benefit me within my lifetime.Assistant: Hoping you die early isnt exactly a good plan. Unless you have a family history of early demise it wouldnt and shouldnt cross your mind. Good portion of early deaths are Darwin award type events. The older you get the higher your odds are of getting older. So no, it shouldnt be part of your plan unless there are specific health issues.Human: But its still a fact that theres a 14 chance of me dying before I can touch my 401k without penalty. Shouldnt that factor in to my budget, if a short term investment I was holding had an extra 14 chance of being worthless that I wasnt aware of then Id adjust how much money I put into that risky investment. Why is it different when it comes to the odds of me dying.  <response>: But its still a fact that theres a 14 chance of me dying before I can touch my 401k without penalty. Shouldnt that factor in to my budget, if a short term investment I was holding had an extra 14 chance of being worthless that I wasnt aware of then Id adjust how much money I put into that risky investment. Why is it different when it comes to the odds of me dying.Youre missing the point entirely. Its objectively not a fact that you have a 14 chance of dying before reaching retirement age. The fact which Im giving you benefit of the doubt on, as I havent checked, is that 14 out of every 100 men your age will not live to that age. Aggregate statistics do not work well for drawing conclusions about individuals.Besides, your 401k is partially an insurance policy. It protects you against the possibility of living a long time, but not being able to work for some reason. Do you think having life insurance is useless because you never personally see the benefit? The 401k functions partially as an inverse life insurance policy. The possibility that you might not see the benfit does not make it worthless. 