However recent figures from a survey undertaken by Sainsbury’s Life Insurance reveal that in the UK millions of borrowers (with billions of dollars worth of home loan debt between them) have failed to take out mortgage protection. In fact a staggering 43% of British mortgagees have no life cover. The recent recession has meant that UK borrowers, struggling to keep up with mounting debts, have cut back on life insurance cover.

A recent survey has shown that nearly a third of 35 to 44 year olds have no life insurance cover protecting their mortgage payments, and 34% of 45 to 54 year olds are in a similar situation. This means that many people with children are unprotected, as well as younger mortgage holders.

According to Lucy Hunter, at Sainsbury’s Life Insurance ‘Life insurance provides financial cover should the unthinkable happen, enabling people to be secure in the knowledge that their dependents could receive a cash lump sum if they were to die.”

This is particularly important for home owners who need to have the reassurance that, should the unthinkable happen, their families would be covered and able to continue living in the family home without the burden of financial responsibility – life insurance is basically ensuring financial security for the future.

Source: The Insurance Blogger.com November 2010.

photo credit: fourbyfourblazer

A study published in May 2010 in the journal “Demography” looked at data collected from over 2 million Danish couples. Statistics showed that women who married partners seven to nine years younger than themselves had an increased mortality rate of 20%.

The study, carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, found that women who marry considerably older men also tend to have shorter lives. A big age gap either way from a woman’s point of view has a detrimental effect on her life expectancy.

A woman’s best choice of partner for a long life is someone of the same age or slightly older.

Men who marry younger women are a much better risk to a life insurance company

This is not the case for men since the research showed that the mortality risk of a man who marries a woman seven to nine years younger than himself is reduced on average by 11%, compared to marrying someone the same age.

“Health Selection” doesn’t work for women

Previously it was thought that it was beneficial for either partner to marry a younger spouse.  This idea known as “health selection” says that those selecting younger partners are generally healthier and have the potential to live longer than others, and that by matching up with someone younger this would increase the positive psychological and social effects which help in older age.

Why don’t women  benefit from their younger husbands

According to researcher Sven Drefahl, “One of the few possible explanations is that couples with younger husbands violate social norms and thus suffer from social sanctions.” It is also believed that the psychological and social benefits an older husband gets from a younger wife do not hold true the other way round – the husband is unlikely to have as many social contacts as a woman would and is less likely to match a woman in terms of the level of care he will offer his ageing wife.

The good news is that life insurance for married couples is cheaper overall

The bright side is that marriage raises life expectancy for both sexes compared with the unmarried, with women overall still outliving men by a few years. This makes them more of a positive investment for a life insurance company when it comes to taking out a life insurance policy.

photo credit: jenny downing

Limited Pay Policies Up By 152%

As Michael Ferik, Senior VP for independent life cover at Guardian Life, speaking at Guardian Whole Life International Forum on October 5 stated “This finding underscores a pronounced desire among Millenials and Gen Xers for financial security at an early age.” This research seems to be corroborated by the fact that sales of ‘limited pay’ life policies at Guardian life – policies which can be paid off over a shorter term, were up by a massive 152% year on year to June this year.

Young Life Policy Buyers Plan their Financial Futures

According to the Guardian survey, 74% of those aged 40 and under stated that they wanted to be more financially stable sooner rather than later, with 76% or respondents saying it was very important for them to be debt free in the near future. In contrast, those aged 40 or older attached less importance to having financial stability or leaving debts behind at 69% and 68% respectively. Mr Ferik believes this could be down to the heavy burden of student debt which younger people have had to deal with which has been reflected in a “desire to be debt free” rather than the more typical baby boomers who have more of a “live for today” attitude.

Protecting Families Number One Reason for Buying Life Insurance

The main reason given by the under 40′s for purchasing life insurance was to protect their families (72%) Those aged over 40 also gave this reason with 79% giving it as the driving motivation. Both age groups also counted the cash payout as the second biggest reason for taking out life coverage.

The results seem to indicate that younger buyers see whole life insurance as less of an ‘insurance product’ but rather as one of a number of assets which can be used to build a stable financial future. According to Ferik “They see whole life’s benefits for meeting unanticipated financial needs that arrive while still alive as better than borrowing from a 401K plan or – for now at least – betting on the stock market.”

Source: Insurancenewsnet.com

photo credit: faungg

A recent report shows there is a substantial gap between the amount of life insurance taken out by men and women who are married with children under 18. The research was carried out by MetLife in its annual ‘Study of Employee Benefit Trends‘ and it shows that working married men take out far more cover than their partners. Working dads take out an average of five times their earnings in life cover, while moms take out on average just three times their annual income.

The report was based on 382 interviews with working parents at companies who had at least two employees and was completed over the last quarter of 2009.

The Gap in Life Coverage is a ‘Worrying Trend’

According to Bill Rackzo vice president of US Business at MetLife this is a worrying trend since “Life Insurance can provide a family with substantial peace of mind. It is important to not only have coverage but to make sure coverage amounts are adequate. That is why it is concerning to see the income of working mothers is not as adequately protected as that of fathers.”

The gap in life coverage amounts is surprising given the survey also showed that both working moms and dads say they are concerned about not having enough life coverage, with six out of ten saying they felt ‘very’ concerned. So why are women not taking out enough life insurance? MetLife believes the reason may be down to poor communications from their employers about benefits – only 26% of working moms thought they were receiving adequate information compared to 46% of working dads.

Working Parents Need to Look Realistically at their Life Insurance Needs

Also, according to Steven Weisbart, PH.d., CLU, Vice President and Chief Economist at the Insurance Information Institute, many people “overlook important expenses that life insurance can help cover. The death of a parent may not only terminate an income source but also a family’s source of health insurance, tuition assistance and other financial benefits.” Dr Weisbart recommends that working parents should get financial advice from life insurance professionals in order to assess their needs. At present only half as many women as men seek this type of assistance.

Workplace a Good Option When Taking out Life Insurance

When assessing life insurance it pays to look to your workplace since you may be able to get beneficial group rates  – it’s easy to set up and it’s also straightforward, with the deductions being made direct from pay. Many employers offer employees the option of supplementing the insurance at good rates. Also, importantly, couples should discuss their options together in order to come to a decision on their life insurance needs.

Source: Insurance News Net

photo credit: World Economic Forum

Iceland leads in life expectancy.

Life Insurance Premiums Likely to Differ Depending on Location

The report showed that although the global mortality rate for adults has fallen by 1% a year for the past 40 years, the difference between the mortality rate of those countries with the highest and lowest rates is increasing. Substantial increases in adult mortality have been seen in the Sub Saharan Desert and in the Soviet Republic due to the Aids epidemic and a significant decline in mortality rates in South Asia. One implication of this new information is that people living in South Asia will be able to get lower Life Insurance premiums.

Individuals with Best Chance of Low Life Insurance premiums

The countries with the lowest mortality rates for men are: Iceland, Sweden, Malta, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia – in fact Australia’s mortality rate decreased dramatically from 44^th place in 1970 to 6^th in 2010. The UK came in at 19^th for mortality rates, Greece at 22^nd.

The report was bad news for the U.S. however, since mortality rates have increased for both men and women – with men dropping to 45^th place (170 deaths per 1000) and women to 49^th. This puts the U.S. way behind its neighbor, Canada whose mortality puts them in 28^th place – a statistic which some people may find surprising.

According to Dr Christopher Murray, author of the study, there may be good reasons for this “Part of it is that Canada is doing a much better job in tobacco than the United States.” Another factor is that Canada has universal health care and less incidence of so-called “affluence diseases” such as high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease and obesity, rates of which are increasing more rapidly in North America than in the developing nations.

Women of Cyprus have Best Chance of Longevity

For women the best place to live is Cyprus, followed by South Korea, Japan, Italy and Greece with Spain retaining a good rating (looks as though that Mediterranean diet pays off after all).

The adult mortality rate has big implications for public health globally and is listed as a Millennium Goal, but has been somewhat neglected until now. The latest research will also be useful for life insurance companies when it comes to underwriting policies in different countries.

Sources

Reuters

Huffington Post

• A divorce or marriage, leading to a name change
• A house move where no forwarding address has been left
• Illegible or badly written records
• Transient lifestyles such as those in the military
• And, most common of all: The heir or beneficiary has died without the knowledge of the life insurer.

According to NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators) state departments across America are sitting on $32.877 billion in unclaimed funds, including life insurance benefits. The New York department holds a staggering $9.9 billion worth of unclaimed assets, and the state of California $5.4 billion.

Life Insurance Policies One of the Biggest areas of Unclaimed Assets

Figures from demutualized Life Insurers show that after becoming public companies, they needed to find millions of policy holders and beneficiaries – totaling $4 billion in unclaimed assets. On demutualization, John Hancock found it did not have current addresses for 400,000 current policy holders; Prudential did not know the whereabouts of 1.2 million of its policyholders, and Met Life held $2.7 billion worth of unclaimed demutualized assets.

Government takes control of Unclaimed Life Policy Funds after 3-5 Years

When a life insurance company receives notification of the death of the policy holder the law states that any unclaimed assets from the demutualization have to be placed in a government trust, if, the listed beneficiaries cannot be found. If there has been no notification that a life insurance policy holder has died and the policy owners cannot be traced, then Life Insurers tend to hold onto life policies until the owner would have reached 100 years of age before handing funds over to the treasury.

Could You be Missing Out on a Payout from an Unclaimed Life Insurance Policy?

If you think you might be a beneficiary of an unclaimed life insurance policy it is worth investigating. It’s worth remembering that even if the Life Insurer holding your potential funds no longer exists there will still be the possibility of a payout of up to $300,000 because the funds should have been placed in a state insurance guaranty association.

Sources

• NAUPA
• MSN Money: Unclaimed Billions How Much Is Yours? Liz Pullman Weston

photo credit: swanksalot

This is unfortunate because as Debbie Cecil, director of life products at Unum says “Life Insurance is one of the building blocks of a solid financial plan.” But due to the economy “many people are just turning away from pursuing this type of coverage.”

U.S. Public has put Life Insurance on the Back Burner

Also, according to financial services consulting and research firm LIMRA the reason more than 40% of Americans have not bought a life insurance policy  is that other priorities such as paying off debt or saving for retirement have become top of the list. This is why 11 million fewer American households are covered by life insurance than six years ago.

Life Insurance Awareness Month Promotes Importance of Life Coverage

Life Insurance Awareness Month is the invention of LIFE (Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education), a not-for-profit organization. The organization is joined each September by 100 of the world’s leading insurers and industry groups with the aim of raising awareness about the importance of life insurance. LIFE urges the public to think of the future in terms of how their family would cope financially if it were suddenly bereaved  - how much of a struggle it would be dealing with the everyday costs of living, as well as education and paying the mortgage?

LIFE is joined by Actress Leslie Bibb

In order to get us thinking about the future LIFE has enlisted a celebrity help in the shape of Leslie Bibb, who has appeared in films such as Iron Man 2, Confessions of a Shopaholic and The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Leslie was only three years old when her father, aged 39, died in an accident at work, leaving her mother with four young children to bring up on her own. Leslie believes that it was her father’s life insurance that enabled the family to survive. “My father died at a young age, but he loved his family enough to expect the unexpected” said Leslie.

The government is also keen to encourage people to include life coverage in their finances: Leslie’s story will be broadcast for the rest of the year via public service announcements on TV and Radio in a bid to remind all of us about the importance of taking stock of our life insurance needs.

photo credit: pshegubj

Recent research carried out by the Boston Medical Centre, University of Boston, shed new light on the role genetics play in the aging process. The study, entitled the “New England Centenarian Study,” is the largest study of people who have reached the age of 100, and includes data from as far back as 1995.

It was found that 77% of the 1000 participants possessed 150 genetic variants in common, so-called ‘longevity genes’. From this research it may be concluded that the presence of these genes in individuals could possibly indicate an increased potential to live to the age of 100.

Environmental Influences also Play a Significant Part in Lifespan

Simply possessing these genes does not insure you are going to live a long, fruitful life. Environmental factors play a huge role in determining ones life expectancy. Factors such as smoking, becoming overweight, and diet will all play a part in determining how long a person will live – which are the same factors life insurance companies have to take into account when assessing a person’s insurance premiums. It is also worth noting that although it seems 77% of people made it to the age of 100 with genetic factors helping them, 23% did it without.

‘Longevity’ Genes may Suppress Harmful ‘Aging’ Genes

Exactly what part these genes play in increasing lifespan is not entirely known. Previously it was thought some people lived longer because they lacked some of the harmful genes which hasten the onset of aging diseases; this new research tells us that in fact longer-lived people possess all the harmful genes, along with the 150 newly identified ones.

This would seem to indicate that ‘longevity genes’ have an ability to suppress harmful genes, somehow limiting their power to trigger aging illnesses in individuals. It was also discovered that in 90% of the centenarians studied none suffered from any typical age-related illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia, until after the age of 93.

Implications for Medicine and Life Insurance

This study has big implications for preventative medicine in the area of aging related disease. It is hoped that further research will be extended in order to focus on different nationalities including the Japanese, believed to have the longest life expectancies of people on the planet. This type of research will also be of great interest to life insurance companies – access to this type of new genetic information might give life insurers a more informed way of assessing risk; knowing that potential life insurance customers have genes which make them likely to live to 100 might reduce life insurance premiums for them since a payout on their life insurance might be a long way off.

Better rates on life insurance would be great – but being told you possess ‘longevity genes’ can’t really be topped.

Life insurance is even more vital for soldiers whose family relies on their financial support.

Life insurance may be an afterthought for much of the general public, but for many young soldiers in the battlefields abroad, it’s a vital tool to help protect the financial security of a soldiers’ family and loved ones.

In a recent statement, defense secretary Robert Gates has warned that the U.S. public needs to see evidence that efforts to make a strategic breakthrough in Afghanistan are working if both countries are to continue to suffer the losses of young soldiers. According to Gates “the public expects to see us moving in the right direction.” We could no longer be expected to “tolerate the perception of a stalemate where we are losing young men.”

Stanley McChrystal, former U.S. commander of NATO forces is, however, said to be confident that there will soon be “sufficient progress” to “validate the strategy.” Belying this aspiration is a recent operation to clear insurgents from Marjah and parts of Helmand – both UK and US sources agree this has not gone according to plan, and soldiers on these battlefields may face a higher risk of death on the lines.

Military Personnel Risky for Most Life Insurance Companies

Soldiers at the front line such as those in Afghanistan and in other war zones operate in an environment whereby fatalities occur daily. Their bravery in light of their hazardous occupation cannot be overstated. From the point of view of life insurance companies, however, they are often too big a risk to insure. Many will not provide life insurance for soldiers who are on active duty.

This graph uses data collected from the Associated Press and Department of Defense to illustrate the growth in soldier deaths in Afghanistan. A soldier's life is at risk, and although most soldiers receive basic life insurance, it may be a good idea to purchase supplemental coverage.

Government Steps in to Provide Life Insurance for Military

This is why the U.S. government provides SGLI – Servicemembers Group Life Insurance – an affordable form of life insurance cover for servicemen and women. Up to $400,000 is provided through this program, in the event of death whilst on active service. There are also commercial life insurers, operating as partners to the US government, who can offer discounts for military personnel. Of course, many members of the armed forces sometimes decide to take out additional life insurance with them. You can request a life plan quote here to see which additional coverage options are available to you.

It’s a great time to protect your family’s finances with life insurance. Start here >>

photo credit: The National Guard

The headline “suicide” probably jumped out at you like a red flag in front of a mad bull. Suicide is nothing to take lightly, and it certainly isn’t in this case here. Chantix, an anti-smoking drug created by the pharmaceutical mega-giant Pfizer, has been linked to cases of depression, psychiatric problems and even suicide. Maybe you have never heard of the drug, but you probably know someone in your life who is a smoker. If they have ever thought of quitting, pass this vital information along to them.

What is Chantix?

According to drugs.com, Chantix “is used as a smoking cessation medicine or treatment. It is used together with behavior modification and counseling support to help you stop smoking cigarettes. Chantix works in the brain to block the pleasurable effects of smoking. This helps to decrease your desire to keep smoking.” That right there might be a warning sign for some: “works in the brain.” Taking a drug like this is no lighthearted undertaking; it literally affects the way your mind thinks and feels about smoking, and obviously other things in your life as well, and as you will see below, has had disastrous side effects.

In the last reported quarter of 2007, Chantix accounted for 988 serious injuries in the US reported to the FDA, more than any other individual drug in this time period. By comparison, the FDA received a median of five reports of serious injury for 769 different drugs. Following that fatal quarter, the total of 20,745 cases reported from January to March was 38 percent higher than the average for the previous four calendar quarters, and the highest for any quarter, a report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices stated. Fatalities accounted for 23 percent of the cases.

The total number of deaths, 4,824, was an increase of nearly 3 percent from the last calendar quarter of 2007. According the a Public Health Advisory issued last year by the FDA, from May 2006 through December 2007, they received 227 reports of suicidal acts, thoughts or behaviors, 397 cases of possible psychosis and 525 reports of hostility or aggression. These included 28 cases of suicide and 41 mentions of homicidal ideation, 60 cases of paranoia and 55 cases of hallucination.

Your Life and Life Insurance Are in Your Hands

The terrifying thing about studies and drugs like Chantix is that the power of your rationale and subsequently, life, are placed in someone else’s hands. In the cases of drugs that work miracles to help with cancer and diabetes, this might be a good thing, because you are being healed. With Chantix, the drug seems to be doing harm to innocent people only seeking to kick an addiction, and despite positive results in some patients, the possibly fatal side effects cannot be ignored. These statistics should help prompt you to think about the value of your own life, whether you are seeking to quit an addiction to smoking or not. Having a life insurance policy is one of the smartest steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

You never know what life is going to throw at you, how certain medications may affect your body, or even how poorly people are going to be driving on the roads any given morning. If you were to suddenly and unexpectedly pass away and you were without a life insurance policy, your loved ones would be left with nothing. Life insurance policies are designed to protect the family you leave behind in the case of an unexpected death. Funds from a life insurance policy can be used to help cover any funeral or memorial costs or to simply help with everyday things like mortgage payments, a child’s tuition, groceries.

Life insurance policies can normally be as flexible as you need them to be: you can decide your premium (the amount you pay per month) your beneficiaries (who the money would go to if you died) and even determining a cash value that you could potentially draw out of if there was an emergency while you are still alive. There are various types of life insurance plans to consider: Temporary insurance, whole life coverage, universal life coverage, limited pay and accidental death. This only a small smattering of what is available to you; life insurance specifically for smokers is available, and this http://www.my-life-insured.com has a number of special topics designed to help you learn more about what policy might work best for you.

photo credit: aprilzosia

photo credit: hans s

Let’s pretend for a minute that you could decide what a year of your life would be worth. That decision would be based on what you felt a year of ‘quality life’ would be worth for you to have to give up, forgetting about any life insurance policies or coverage that you may have. It will probably be a very hard figure for you to come up with and will depend on whether you’re young and single or older with a family depending on you to take care of them. Would it be one million dollars? More? Less?

Life is Worth Less Than You May Think

Well, would you believe that the value of a year of life has been calculated and standardized by life insurance companies as being worth…are you ready for this?

$50,000.

Yup. That’s it. Barely a year’s salary for most people these days. While some studies have worked to place a much higher figure on treatments that can help people with health issues live longer lives, the health and life insurance companies – as well as most government agencies – still use the $50,000 figure as the standard when calculating medical treatments or insurance coverage. Using a dollar figure to represent the value of a human life, may seem to be in very bad taste, but most institutions and agencies dealing with life and death routinely use this sort of dollar figure to calculate a variety of values.

Still, calculating the amount of your life insurance benefit on this statistic alone may not be the best barometer. Stanford scientists have challenged the $50,000, and say that a year of life is actually worth around $129,000. The Stanford School of Business calculation is based largely on the cost of kidney dialysis, which is then adjusted for quality of life (according to the study, one year of “quality life” is equivalent to two years on dialysis).

What About Life Insurance for the Military

For instance, the $500,000 that the government pays out to families of American soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan isn’t really meant to replace the value of that person’s life. The pay out is merely to help the family of the slain soldier better deal with getting on with the rest of their lives. It’ll never replace the soldier in their lives, but again…the government agency needed a dollar value and a committee somewhere decided on $500,000 as the figure.

Source

• Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html.
  

photo credit: Daquella manera

Outbreaks of resurging or new infectious diseases – many from foreign countries – kill more than 170,000 people in America each year. That’s a pretty scary statistic. Newly discovered global pandemics or even bio-terrorist attacks, are a real threat to the security of the nation. How would you be prepared for such a medical catastrophe should it happen? What would you do to protect your family in the case of a bio-terrorist attack? These are questions that our parents and grandparents didn’t have to deal with. It’s only in the past decade or so that these outbreaks have become a viable threat to our life.

Even the Plague Can Happen Here

Something as medieval as the plague can happen again. There have been recent outbreaks of pneumonic plague even in the United States. While the cases were diagnosed and quickly treated, there’s no way of predicting what would happen if it occurred in another country where the medical treatments couldn’t handle the problem quickly enough. The disease would spread at a phenomenal rate and eventually end up on our shore. Pneumonic plague is usually fatal in 65% of cases – even with proper medical treatment. Epidemics such as influenza, HIV, West Nile virus and SARS have become real medical threats in the past few years, with varying success of treating and slowing the spread of the diseases.

Recent studies suggest that as many as 60% of epidemics start when microbes pass from animals to humans. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease reports that the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak killed nearly 100 million people globally. In relation, the Black Plague of medieval times killed a mere 25 million people. The AIDS epidemic continues to spread, especially in developing countries where medical aid is almost non-existent. The SARS epidemic spread so quickly, that it infected 8,275 people and killed 775 – in just six weeks. The next emerging disease or epidemic will be the one that we least expect and are least capable of dealing with.

How will an Epidemic Affect Insurance

The Insurance Information Institute (III) found in their report, Pandemic: Can the Life Insurance Industry Survive the Avian Flu, that a moderate flu epidemic, similar to the flu outbreak of the late-60s would cost U.S. life insurers an estimated $15 billion – similarly, a severe epidemic, similar to the 1918 influenza outbreak could cost up to $155 billion.

Such an occurrence would have a severe effect on the industry, and many insurers would have asset depreciation to the point that they’d need to declare bankruptcy.

How to Choose a Life Insurer that Survives a Flu Pandemic

As you seek a life insurance policy in your class, you want to be aware of the financial strength of your insurer. The III report concludes that large life insurers, with solid balance sheets and a high AAA, Fitch, S&P, or A.M. Best rating could hold up to the rigors of an infectious disease outbreak. However, smaller companies will find themselves strapped, and may even end up unable to pay out policy benefits.

You also want to be sure that your life insurance covers you for infectious diseases, or death by illness. Most Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D or ADD) policies will not provide benefits for infectious diseases. Still, by making sure that you’re protected with life insurance, you can ensure that your family is protected should anything happen to you in the way of a pandemic outbreak.

photo credit: Kah Zanon.

It may seem like just a harmless habit that anyone can stop at any time, but smoking tobacco is one of the hardest addictions to break. In young people, the damage from tobacco smoke can also cause lung development to be reduced, which will have an impact on maximum lung functions later in life. Teenagers also are at a much higher risk of addiction because teens become addicted to substances at a much faster rate.

Life Insurance for Sons and Daughters Who Smoke

In addition to your young one being at risk for all of these negative effects, you may find another shocker – and that’s in the pocket-book. Life insurance for your teenager or college-age son or daughter may cost you as much as $350 / month more. That’s because life insurance policies are able to set higher rates for smokers. The way each company sets their premium varies, but it’s often determined by how much tobacco your son or daughter consumes.

Some companies differentiate between light and heavy tobacco usage, while others have two levels of smokers: Standard and Preferred. Your son or daughter will generally fall into the preferred tobacco level, but make no mistake: Premiums will still be significantly higher than they would be if they did not smoke at all.

How to Get Them to Quit

Quitting smoking may be difficult for your young one, but you should try to convince them that chronic bronchitis, heart disease and high risk of stroke are just some of the hazards associated with smoking tobacco. More than half a million Americans die from tobacco-related causes every single year, with the great majority of them having started smoking when they were in their early teens. Smoking can also cause you to look bad. Tobacco smoke dries the skin out and causes wrinkles and can even contribute to premature grey hair and hair loss.

Playing any type of sport is much more difficult when you smoke. Shortness of breath and dizziness will have a detrimental effect on everything you try to do physically. Every year many thousands of people die from complications arising from constantly being around someone who smokes and breathing in their smoke.

Your Chances of Dying in a Lightning Strike Are Greater Than…

Some people love the sound of thunder and of rain pattering against the windows, but others worry about being killed by lightning during a thunderstorm. Just how likely is it really that you’ll die this way? Well, each year about 1 in 3 million people are killed by lightning. Your lifetime risk of dying from a lightning strike is about 1 in 80,000. To put it in perspective, here are five even less likely ways to die.

Terrorist Attack
The events of 9/11 brought home the stark realities of terrorism and its toll. For the first time since the Civil War, a war was brought to our home soil, and naturally, we hated it. We feared it as well. Dying in a terrorist attack suddenly seemed a very real possibility. But what do the numbers say? Well, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 1 person out of 88,000 will lose his or her life as a result of terrorism. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning.

Shark Attack
Ever since the book and the movie Jaws , the American public has “known” that sharks are dangerous. And in a way, they are. They’re small-brained carnivores and we’re a food source. But only about 1 in 8 million people in the United States will die at the hands…er…teeth of a shark. So get that horrible theme song out of your head!

Venomous Bite
Like sharks, venomous snakes and spiders were never intended by nature to be cute and cuddly, but in the final analysis, they’re less lethal than lightning, killing just 1 in 100,000 Americans.

Autoerotic Asphyxiation
Autoerotic asphyxiation refers to cutting off one’s own airway during masturbation to enhance sexual pleasure. Sometimes oxygen is withheld from the brain for too long, and death occurs. According to Dr. Stephen Hucker, forensic psychiatrist, about 1 in 1 million people will die from autoerotic asphyxiation. The actual number may be higher, however, because death certificates do not always accurately reflect self-inflicted causes of death. In any event, this cause of death is 100% avoidable. Never do anything to choke yourself.

Asteroid Impact
A great many television programs have solemnly informed us that the Earth is in a shooting gallery of asteroids and that “some day” the big one will hit and destroy a good part of humanity. So should you start planning for extinction? Not yet. Your odds of being killed by an asteroid strike are 1 in 200,000. You’re far more at risk from the lightning.