We need to add up the right figures to make the most of our lives

Life is much more than a mere numbers game, but numerals play such a key role in measuring, and hence appreciating, our health and wealth.

This week we focus on three different numbers which have an unmathematical  connection.

One (250,000!) is a large and proud number about belonging to this group, which is really about mutual benefit.

The second number ($4300) is a more manageable step-by-step figure around better controlling your health outcomes.

And the third is a four-figure code which rightly or wrongly indicates your wealth and longevity.

First off the FiftyUp Club, named after a significant integer in our lifetimes, has reached a milestone of its very own.

You are now one of a quarter of a million members in Australia after we ticked over the magic number this week as part of our Fair Go for FiftyUps campaign.

The sum is equivalent to the number of public servants in Queensland (gulp!) or the residents of cities such as the UK’s Wolverhampton or USA’s Baton Rouge.

If you met every member for just an hour 24/7, and believe me they have many stories to tell, it would take you 10,416 days or some 28.5 years to get to the end.

On Friday I met some 30 members at Caloundra on Qld’s Sunshine Coast, the top post code for those joining the campaign, and they were very talkative.

I’d hope by the year 2045 we might have at least another 250,000 members as Generation X and Y take their rightful place in the club. So you’d never get to the end.

The second figure in the news this week is the extra 4300 steps those over 55 should try and take every day to spend less time in hospital.

The Australian research showed for every increase of 1,000 steps you take each day there’s a nine per cent drop in the total hospital bed-days you’ll need each year.

That amounts for a 40-minute stroll of three kilometres or a number of brief walks through the day. Surely not asking too much now to spend less time in the future in a ward?

The final and more fatalistic figure we may have less choice around is the postcode where you live.

 A self-managed superannuation conference heard people living in high socio-economic areas in the UK lived up to nine years longer than those in poorer suburbs.

The good news is people mistakenly underestimate their own life expectancy. They base it on when their parents or grand-parents died when improvements in health and wealth mean they should live longer.

In all it’s been a pretty good week for  numbers and who knows where there may end.

For the FiftyUp Club, still really in its infancy,  I say well done and here’s to the next milestone of 500,000.

Watch Christopher on the TODAY show here