Tontines may make sense despite their history of disrepute
My favourite example of death related investment is the French housing system, <i>viager</i>. You can buy the rights to a house, but you only get the deeds once the current owner dies. In return for paying the current (often elderly) owner a modest monthly rent plus a lump sum, you get the house for a low price (e.g. 50% off).  The lump sum is a fraction of the discount price and the rent is, keeping it morbid, based on French life expectancy.<p>The fun part is you aren't allowed to ask explicitly how healthy the owner is, so it's a total gamble. You might be stuck paying rent to someone who lives until they're 100 or they could die in an "accident" tomorrow. So in addition to checking the walls for damp when you go round, buyers surreptitiously look for medication and disability aids. Presumably some people also go to the trouble of stalking the current owners to gauge how close they are to the coffin.<p>To make things more exciting, if your parents bought a house <i>en viager</i> and they leave it to you in their will (but the owner hasn't died yet), you're on the hook for the payments. If you don't keep them up, the owner can re-sell the house.<p><a href="http://www.connexionfrance.com/explaining-the-viager-system-10211-news-article.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.connexionfrance.com/explaining-the-viager-system-...</a>