Health, Longevity, & Life Insurance

Written by Greg

I’ve been reading about the subject of longevity lately.  Although it sounds morbid, I believe its important to keep your financial house in order, and an area I’ve been lacking is term life insurance, outside of my employer benefits.  So, I’m in the process of getting that corrected.  But the entire exercise got me wondering about the subject of life expectancy.

Is There Really a Link Between Health and Longevity?

health longevity life insuranceHave you ever sat through a life insurance interview?  When you put in an application, they send you a 20-page book filled with forms and questions.  That’s fun.  As a follow up, you have to meet a “premedical examiner.”  I gather these are independent contractors, whose purpose is to provide a medical history and collect necessary blood samples, etc. for testing prior to a policy being granted.  I’d have to say that they’re really quite thorough.

This was the regimen of testing I received:

  • Resting heart rate
  • Exercising heart rate
  • Heart rate after 2 minute recovery from exercise
  • Chest size, both with lungs full and “blown out”
  • Weight and Height
  • Family medical history
  • My medical history

They also took blood and urine samples.  I figure by the time this is done, they’ll know more about my health history than I ever thought about.

I’m assuming they’ll take this information and put it all on an actuarial table to decide how much of a financial risk I represent.  That got me thinking about actuarial tables (fascinating, right?), and I encountered a website from Northwestern Mutual Financial Network called The Longevity Game.  You’ll go through and answer questions about lifestyle, family history, height/weight, etc., and the calculator spits out an estimated life expectancy.  If you’re interested, mine is 93.

Check it out.  The values get generated in real-time based on your answers, so you can get a feeling for how your lifestyle choices and health may affect your life expectancy.

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  4. Personal Responsibility In Life And Fitness
  5. The Unintentional Health Food Nut

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