Chances of dying

August 11th, 2009

I stumbled up on a website that shows the chances of a person dying by different causes.  It is quite an interesting read, apparently there is a bigger chance that I will be shot to death than I will ever win the National Lottery which is a shame because I have always quite liked the idea of winning, but I’m not too keen on the shooting.

Oh well, I’m sure that statistic included America so is hugely inflated so I guess I am safe.  I really have no idea how people come up with these numbers.  I took A level statistics and it was the worst thing I have ever done, complicated methods of finding out the chance that something will happen and each method can only be used in one unique case.  Well that’s what it felt like to me.  Apparently there is a 1 in 2,518,072 chance that the earth will be hit by a huge asteroid in 2009 that will kill us all according to NASA.

It is facts like that that nearly make me want to go out and buy life insurance for my self.  It isn’t something I have ever considered only being in my 20’s because you always see it on the TV for over 50’s and the news for life insurance is showing more and more products.

What I don’t understand about life insurance is that normally insurance is like a bet, the insurers bet you don’t have to make a claim and if you don’t, they win and keep you money.  The more risky the bet the higher your premium.  Well with life insurance the chances of dying are 100%, everyone dies at some point, so how do the insurers win?  Unless they charge extremely high prices to make sure they get more money then they give away when you die. But if that is the case why not just save the money yourself, its very confusing.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Insurance | Comments (1)

Leave a Reply