Don't let the old man in

Our days are numbered, so let's try to get the best value out of them

- Marcus Padley

I was once very taken with a story (hopelessly embellished for effect) that Warren Buffett's "people" had once been so pestered by a wealthy Pom wanting an audience for "just one hour" that they eventually appealed to Buffett himself to get rid of the man. His reply was simple enough. "I have worked out that I have 42,515 hours left to live, if you don't mind, I don't want to waste any of them."

Since we heard this in the office, we started what we called "the Death Sheet". It is an Excel spreadsheet that slaves off the actuarial life expectancy tables. The average life expectancy of a newly born Australian female is now 85.3 years. The average Australian male life expectancy is 81.2 and, if you are now 65, that extends to 88 for the girls and 85.3 for the boys.

Enter your birth date into the Death Sheet and it instantly tells you the date of your death, including how many years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and weekends you have left to live. I was particularly impressed with one colleague in the office who should already be dead.