According to this report, the Rapture which failed to take place on 21 May 2011 as predicted, will now take place today (21 Oct 2011).

Read our previous blog on this topic.

The problem with the Rapture is that we don’t know who exactly will get the highly desirable heavenly call-up and who’ll be discarded to face hell on earth. If you’re the family breadwinner and you’re raptured away, will your family have the financial resources to continue living their devilish lifestyle without you?

Have no fear… that’s where ‘Rapture Insurance’ comes in.

Rapture Insurance (read ‘Life Insurance’) is hellishly simple. You get raptured and the insurance company pays a cash lump sum to your surviving, earthbound family.

Better still, you can buy this insurance online, all done in just 10 minutes.

With just hours to go, there’s no time to waste. Get insured now… click here!

Do you exercise for at least 15 mins per day??

Yes?

Then (in a perfect world obviously) you should be entitled to a 14% discount on your life insurance premiums!!

A research study briefing in Time Magazine says that just 15 minutes of exercise each day increased your life expectancy by 3 years and reduced your risk of dying by 14%.

Research was conducted on 400,000 Taiwanese people over a period of 3 years, and the study compared people who undertook on average 15 minutes of exercise per day with people who were inactive.

Whilst we’ve known for a long time that exercise is good for your health, the specific relationship between ‘minutes of exercise’ and ‘years of longevity’ has not been that well researched.

With this type of information now emerging, I would not be surprised if in years to come life insurance companies start asking about your exercise habits before either quoting a price or issuing you a policy.

Watch this space.

It would be remiss of me not to write an article about the Rugby World Cup, and life insurance. How could I let such an opportune moment slide by without giving the lighter side of the important role sport events plays in our industry?

Let’s start with the car keys, that silver and brass jingle in your pocket (or so you thought), essential to getting back home in time to watch the replay. Statistics show, that your keys are the most likely item to be lost at a major sporting event. After a major sporting event, a stadium will receive on average 70 calls for lost keys. It may well be the levels of intoxication that predicate these lost keys. A study conducted by the University of Minnesota determined that one in every 12 fans leaves a major sporting event intoxicated.

It turns out that all types of motorists — not just pizza delivery drivers — are at risk on the roads after a major sports event. A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine tracked driving deaths on 27 consecutive Super Bowl Sundays discovered a 41% jump in the number of fatalities in the hours after the game than in the same time period on all other Sundays.

The study also reported that the number of crashes in the state of the losing team rose 68% after the game, compared with an increase of just 6% in the winner’s state.

So let’s keep the road fatalities down to an absolute minimum. …. Go The All Blacks!

…and click here to see what you’d pay for life insurance…

October is Breast Cancer Action Month and 8 October is Pink Ribbon Day. This is all about making people aware that breast cancer is the #1 woman-killer in New Zealand and that women should undergo regular screening.

Some facts:

• All women have a chance of developing breast cancer in their lifetimes.
• Around 2,400 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year
• As women grow older, the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer increases…

• The rate of breast cancer diagnosis is increasing in NZ… an 18% increase in the ten-year period 1995 and 2004…
• However, the death rate from breast cancer is falling slightly… due (in part) to the efforts of making women more aware of the need for regular screening… which is exactly why we’re talking about it on our blog!
• Still, more than 600 women are likely to die this year from breast cancer… that’s 12 women per week! So no reason to be complacent.

In NZ many women tend not to have regular screening mammograms…. this means if there is breast cancer, it’s often well established by the time their doctor examines them and these women are more at risk of dying from breast cancer… obviously.

Finally, Pinnacle Life recently launched an insurance product called Cancer Cover.

The product pays out a lump sum up to $250,000 if you’re diagnosed with cancer… cash you can use to supplement your income, pay medical bills or simply take some time out.

For each Cancer Cover policy purchased online, Pinnacle Life will make a donation to The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (NZBCF).

To get a quote for Cancer Cover, click here…

Just when you find out that relaxing is good for your health, you find out that ‘sitting’ is not one of the ways to do it.

You can read all about it here and here.  And to help you cut to the chase quickly, here are the two conclusions…

Study 1: Sitting and watching TV shortens your life by 22 minutes for every hour you spend glued to the screen.  This means people who watch TV on average 3 hours a day are likely to shorten their life expectancy by 2 to 3 years.

Study 2: People who sit more than 10 hours per day have a 48% higher risk of dying than people who sit for less than 4 hours per day. Since most people with desk jobs (like me) already sit around 6 to 8 hours per day at the office, that doesn’t leave much for driving and relaxing at home without taking your life into your hands.

OK.  So sitting is not only bad for you, it also appears to be a good predictor of how long you’ll live…. Which brings us to life insurance, which is what this blog’s about… remember?

You see, if we know that sitting is one of the factors that influences how long you’ll live, then surely this should also influence what you pay for life insurance. If you’re deemed to be a big-time sitter, you’re headed for an early grave and you should be charged more for your life insurance. Conversely, if you spend most of your time on your feet (eg a builder) then you should be charged less for your life insurance.

Here’s an idea

On your life insurance application, you’re typically asked if you participate in dangerous pastimes such as sky diving, base jumping, rock climbing, scuba diving and so on, because these pastimes are likely to reduce your lifespan.

So how about adding another dangerous pastime to this list… like ‘sitting’?