Reading the Actuarial Tables

Who’s ever looked at those online longevity calculators to see how long you might live? I have. As of a week ago, my results were: 83 from the BBC, 84.2 by Social Security, and an encouraging 93 by the more detailed NorthwestMutual Life Longevity Indicator, thanks to my boring but healthy lifestyle. It sounds right; my father lived to 92, and I exercise a lot more than he ever did.

Of course, nobody has a lock on another day of this life. Five men I know died in their 60s in recent months. Last Friday marked 39 years since my mother died at 63, cancer. Nobody knows the day or hour. Except in memory, time’s arrow flies in one direction only, endlessly converting the infinite future into our limited present and past.

Let me explain these musings on mortality and “how long.” They respond to this question: does it make sense for me to get lifetime memberships to associations or lifetime magazine subscriptions? Who makes out like a bandit on the deal, me or the publisher?

I got hooked on the notion of lifetime membership in 1984, when I stayed in youth hotels during a month in Europe. I became an annual member of American Youth Hostels (AYH then, HI USA now, part of Hostelling International), then learned about a lifetime deal. I was still in my 20s and ready for globe-hopping adventures involving hostels, so why not? My lifetime membership card is dated January 29, 1987, I was 29 years old. 

The last time I used my membership was October 6, 2001, on Amsterdam Avenue in New York I stayed at the AYH building there alone, by the way, after seeing my father and his wife. I was unemployed and my life was in a shambles and in no rush to get home to the suburbs. The group still sells life membership for $250. I can't even remember what I paid back then, $150? Still, I'm glad I got that membership and supported the organization. That card's still valid, you know.

I kept my eyes open for other opportunities. I sometimes bought the quarterly magazine Jewish Currents. Founded 1946 by communists—that’s right, by fanatical proponents of godless Marxism-Leninism, bound by strict Party discipline!—it now describes itself as “a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left, and the left more broadly.” I like Currents' independence and ability to show me new perspectives. I sprang for a subscription in 2015 and even pitched then-editor Lawrence Bush on an article about my memoir, A Kosher Dating Odyssey. Bush wrote a pleasant rejection email, noting that a book with the word “kosher” in the title wouldn’t be “the cup of tea” of the Currents’ highly secular readership.

When I saw Currents offered a lifetime subscription for $300 in 2016, I checked the actuarial tables and decided I had enough years left to make the deal attractive. Hence, Currents will be rolling into my mailbox until at least the 2040s, so I hope. Or even 2050, if Northwest Mutual got it right and I keep up my fitness routine.

I found few magazines offer lifetime subscriptions. The most prominent: National Geographic for $895. That sounds like a great gift for kids, but I can read it at the library, which I never do anyway. Websites offer lifetime subscriptions to cloud storage services, but the way websites come and go, I prefer to use my 5-terabyte external hard drive for my scurrilous writings and thousands of pictures of cats and the Katonah train station.

Last month, I learned about a great offer from The Jewish Press. This is an Orthodox and highly conservative weekly based in Brooklyn, about as opposite of Jewish Currents as possible. I never subscribed but for decades I’d occasionally buy it to read about the wisdom of sages, advice for singles and their anxious parents, politics and global updates on antisemitism. The Press was offering a four-year subscription for $200. That worked out to $1 on issue, way better than the $3 cover price. After years as a “fellow traveler,” to user a term surely known by the politically aware folks at Currents, I signed up. Its 100-plus page issues roll into my mailbox every Saturday. 

Four years will get me to 2026. After that, who knows? If I'm still around, maybe I'll sign up for another four years while hanging out at a youth hostel during a globe-hopping trek. After all, I still want to get a lot of mileage out of that lifetime membership card.