Given the current lifestyle you lead, how long can you expect to live? Try this test by the Northwest Mutual Financial Group to find out. This is probably a simplified version of how they figure out their life insurance rates. However, it should be a good indicator if you were like most people and will fall within statistical boundaries.
The Northwest Mutual Financial Longevity Game
It probably seems odd to be thinking about mortality celebrating a new year, but it’s the time when I ponder a lot about the future and this test came into my life today. The reason I did this test and encourage you to try is to use expected longevity as motivation to improve your life. Getting an answer to your life expectancy provides you with a starting value from which you can work to improve some things in your lifestyle and try again at the end of the year to see if you can get a better result.
It’s just a test based on statistics, sure, but if the test were bad, insurance companies that use them wouldn’t be so successful. Appease your ego any way you like that you are the exception, but I only wish you luck because only a select few can be. Now, if you suddenly had the human urge to run to some palm reader, soothsayer, Tarot Card reader, or otherwise, for a more metaphysical method, I’ll only warn you that all you’ll probably get are answers with metaphysical accuracy.
The test I’ve recommened was backed by Ian Ayres, author of Supercrunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. The test is quite fun, incidentally, being formatted like a game. It’ll ask you various questions, animate your answers, and play the odds based on a large set of population data. Click here to take it.
After you are done, if you don’t mind, please leave a comment on this entry with a name (real or not) and your result. You can then come back near the end of the year to take the test again and see how things might have changed. I’ll post a reminder with a delayed post.
You can also leave any thoughts after having seen a credible predictor of your longevity. Being faced with such a thing often stirs a little thought and emotion to stop, step back and look at life with a bigger perspective.
As for me, I’m expected to live to 90. That, frankly, actually disappoints me. My small genetic stature probably was the main influence on this result as I was able to answer all the healthy lifestyle questions so well. I was really hoping to live to at least 100. Ultimately, though, I know that living each day fully, to do something good for the world around me now and/or after I’m gone, is all I can ask of myself for however long I might end up living. I don’t pretend like I can live life to the fullest each day, or do my best each day, but if I give it a good effort, that’s as much as I can ask of my humanity.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 9.7
