The human quest for immortality has led us down many roads–religion, science, exploration, meditation and just about anything else we could think of that might give us some glimmer of hope that we might manage to miss our final destination. Maybe we’re missing the obvious answer, though. Maybe we just need to buy life insurance.

Have you ever walked around downtown in a major city? The next time you do, look up at some of those big, beautiful, expensive buildings. Notice the names on them. You’ll see a common theme, with names like Prudential, AIG and Kemper appearing on some of the biggest. Insurance companies can’t build modern day palaces like that if they’re losing money. Since the idea behind life insurance is that you pay the insurance company until you die, then they pay your family the only way for the insurance companies to be making so much money is for the insured to be staying alive, right?

Oh sure, you could make the argument that the insurance companies just charge more to offset the cost of paying out death benefits, but the fact is that life insurance rates have actually been coming down over the last several years according to an article in USA Today. Perhaps a better argument is that people are living longer, meaning that insurance companies get to collect your premiums for a few more years before they have to pay up.

But maybe there is a link between owning life insurance and living longer. A life insurance company will use a number of factors to set your premium amount. An article on CNN.com explains that insurance companies will look at your health, lifestyle, occupation, family history and more, basically with the goal of determining exactly how likely you are to die at a young age. Really, if you want to know when you’re going to die, don’t talk to a fortune teller; talk to an insurance adjuster–they’re far more accurate. Anyway, the more likely you are to die young, as determined by the insurance adjuster, the higher your premiums will be. The logical conclusion would be that if you were really likely to die soon, your premiums would be so high that you couldn’t afford them. Therefore, the fact that you can afford life insurance might mean that you are not very likely to die soon. And if you can still afford your life insurance 50 or 100 years from now–so be it.

So the bottom line is that life insurance companies are in the business of knowing when you’re going to die, so if they’re willing to offer you life insurance as a decent price, the odds are that your number is going to be up for quite awhile. As for immortality, well, make friends with an insurance adjuster and I’m sure they’ll do what they can.