Once again, it’s not your fault.

According to researchers at the University of Cambridge in England, the length of a man’s ring finger may predict his success as a financial trader.

See, you can’t help it that you’re lousy with money. Biology did you in.

That ring-to-index finger ratio previously has been linked to one’s success in competitive sports, increased confidence, willingness to take risks, persistence, vigilance and quickened reaction times, according to the Associated Press.

It explains a lot in my life. I think.

Actually, this is the first time I noticed that my right ring finger is a quarter inch longer than my left. I’m not sure what this means. Perhaps, on the one hand, I have great potential, but on the other hand it falls short?

I never hit a single shot I heaved toward the basket on the eighth-grade team. I thought it was because I didn’t have talent for basketball. Now I know it was because my right ring finger is too short.

I bet you flubbed a math test because of your stubby ring finger.

Hey, these are not excuses we are making here. It’s science.

A team led by physiologist John M. Coates reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month that the ratio between ring and index finger length is determined before birth. The greater exposure the fetus has to the male hormone androgen, the more the ring finger grew, and the more aggressive — and successful — the personality after birth.

In this case, Coates’ group studied 44 guys who were traders in the London financial district over 20 months of high-finance dealings. The ones with longer ring fingers compared to their index fingers made 11 times more money than those with the shortest ring fingers, according to the study. Looking only at experienced traders, the long-ring-finger folks earned 5 times more than those with short ring fingers, The Associated Press reported.

All those years that our parents told us to try harder were wasted. All along, it wasn’t effort, it was the size of our fingers.

It’s not the first time that science has ruined our best efforts.

Would you really have chosen that face for yourself given the opportunity? Our parents stuck us with these mugs. With a lot of help from our ancestors. That’s why there aren’t a lot more Brad Pitts and Angelina Jolies running around adopting everything in sight.

Remember the 30-year study published in July 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine about heftiness? If your friends and family put on weight, odds are, so will you.

“We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door,” study co-author James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, told The Associated Press.

So my face is Mom and Dad’s fault. My fat is your fault. The reason I can’t buy more Twinkies is the fault of my abbreviated finger.

There was some stuff sprinkled in the various studies about overcoming genetic predispositions with hard work and conscious effort, but I didn’t read that far. Short attention span.

I blame MTV.

The point is, we can flop in our La-Z-Boys guilt-free. And if you feel better now, blame me.