Finance
Life spans are growing but ‘health spans’ are shrinking
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First, the good news: Americans are living longer than they used to.
Now, the bad news: Older Americans are spending more years in poor health. That dynamic often comes with negative financial consequences, medical and financial experts say.
Since 1960, the average U.S. life span has increased to 77.5 from roughly 70 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But “health spans” are simultaneously shrinking.
A health span is the number of years older people spend in fundamentally good health, said Susan Roberts, a professor of medicine and epidemiology and senior associate dean for foundational research at Dartmouth College.
Today, the average person spends about 10 years with chronic ailments like diabetes, cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, dementia, cataracts or osteoporosis — roughly double the duration in the 1960s, Roberts said.
As a result, there’s a “widening gap” between one’s life and health spans, she said.
This is because medicine has gotten better at keeping sick people alive, though not necessarily treating them, Roberts said. Obesity, which is an underlying cause of many chronic diseases, is also more widespread, she said. Obesity affects 42% of U.S. adults, according to CDC data released in 2021.
How health impacts wealth
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The concept of a health span is “increasingly important” for a household’s finances, said Stacy Francis, a certified financial planner based in New York and member of CNBC’s Advisor Council.
Adults are spending more time “living a life where they’re not in their best state,” said Francis, president and CEO of Francis Financial. “And it results in significant expenses.”
About 90% of the nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs are for people with chronic diseases and mental health conditions, according to the CDC.
Medical costs get “worse and worse” once people have a chronic ailment, Roberts said.
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The average 65-year-old retiring this year will spend about $165,000 in out-of-pocket health and medical expenses in retirement, up 5% from 2023, according to Fidelity Investments.
Out-of-pocket treatment costs and early retirements due to poor health are two big ways chronic conditions impact households financially, experts said.
Early retirement might mean claiming Social Security earlier than expected — perhaps resulting in a lower monthly benefit, said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and CFP based in Jacksonville, Florida.
“A person’s health directly impacts their wealth — and this connection becomes even more acute as people age,” Susan Silberman, senior director of research and evaluation at the National Council on Aging, said in a 2022 briefing.
Of course, this isn’t to say healthy people avoid significant medical expenses.
They may ultimately pay more over the long term relative to an unhealthy individual if they need long-term care, for example, which can be costly and more likely with age, said McClanahan, the founder of Life Planning Partners and a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council.
Plus, healthy people experience more “go-go” years, meaning they can travel and spend on fun things, she said.
Invest in yourself
“When you are in your 40s and 50s, it’s the point of no return,” McClanahan said.
If adults don’t start tending to their health by this age, they become more susceptible to chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure, which can lead to sudden issues like strokes and heart attacks, she said.
Treat purchases of healthy food, gym memberships or exercise classes as an investment in yourself, said Francis. Prioritize the spending on your health and, if it feels like too much money, try to cut back on spending that “doesn’t increase your health span,” she said.
“I think of that like an investment I put in my 401(k),” Francis said.
“Those extra dollars … will add years to your life and you’ll make up for it,” she said.
More than half of people can reverse a diabetes diagnosis by losing 10% of their weight within the first seven years of that diagnosis, Roberts said.
The “biggest tragedy” of chronic ailments is that “they’re preventable,” Roberts said. A few dietary tweaks — eliminating sugary drinks like soda and juice, and eating small, healthy snacks like an apple — can make a “dramatic difference,” she said.
“Learning to like healthy foods is actually not that difficult,” Roberts said. “Practice it for a couple weeks and be patient with yourself.”
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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