(I know I am not responding to each of your questions here.)
It is very important that you understand the limitations of using a "life expectancy" number in making your calculations. The number you've given sounds like Canadian life expectancy at birth for a man. However, there are two main problems with using this number:
1. It isn't valid for a male at retirement age. Life expectancy increases as we age. What you need is not the static life expectancy at birth, but the life expectancy for a healthy male, at your expected retirement age. This number *increases* with each year of life (until very advanced ages).
More useful still is a calculation of the probability of survival of a healthy male, at your expected retirement age, over a defined period. You will find it is much greater than you think. (And when I get to work I can provide more on this.)
2. It doesn't cover off any probabilities other than that you will live to that exact age, and then die.
What you need, as noted above, is a probability array that describes your chance of being alive at the end of a series of periods. And then you need to get that number down to a rate you are comfortable with (i.e., I have now found a scenario where my survival probability over this period of time is less than 5%) -- keeping in mind that you never have to deal with this issue as a pensioner, and that you can't undo the CV decision if you get it wrong.
