Awareness about Term Life insurance has increased manifold. Many people are either already insured or wanting to insure themselves. Buying term insurance is very convenient nowadays. With the ease of online insurance plans and Low-cost insurance, it has become an important part of a long term personal financial plan. While the loss of a near & dear one is emotionally devastating, term life insurance at least helps you to ensure that the financial loss does not worsen the tragedy.
We can calculate insurance cost online with few clicks based on some general questions but your final premium is based on your health and medical history and other factors. While applying for Life insurance policy, insured has to disclose facts & various personal details like age, height & weight, Income, health, habits etc.
Cost of insurance differs from person to person. Mainly life insurance cost depends on mortality rate. Any factors Which increase the chances of mortality increases your cost of insurance. Higher the risk higher the cost. There are many factors which affect mortality. Few of them are not in your control. These include your age, health & medical history of yours and family or whether you have any pre-existing medical conditions. However, you can control or change few of your unhealthy habits which will reduce your cost of insurance.
1. Weight
Your height and weight are one of the most important factors which affects your life insurance cost. Insurance companies needs to determine whether you are healthy person by calculating your BMI (body mass index). Based on this insurer decided if you are overweight or underweight as per their pre-decided measurement of weight in proportion to your height. Overweight / Underweight puts insured at more serious health issues like diabetes, stroke, heart attack etc. If you are able to control your weight and maintain a healthy BMI i.e. balanced weight as per your height, you will be able to save more on insurance cost.
2. Smoking & Drinking
Insurer ask question in the application form about your drinking and smoking habits of individual. If you are smoker then question like how many cigarettes you smoke in day and if you are drinker then question will be asked about how many units of alcohol you drink per week / day. There is substantial difference in life insurance premium for non smoker and non drinker individual’s.
3. Adventurous Sports
Any individual who enjoys and involved in activity like trekking, bungee jumping or sky diving, car racing etc. are classified as highly risky and can result in high life insurance cost.
4. Working in a Risky job
Your job and current profile also plays a crucial role in deciding insurance cost. If you are working in merchant navy or mining job or as pilot or any other high risky job, it increases professional hazard. Insurer charges lesser premium to people who works in administrative job and higher premium to people who working either in high risk job or may be posted in an area where life risk is very high.
5. Taking Drugs
If you are habitual of taking illegal drugs like Marijuana, cocaine etc. it will impact your life insurance cost. If you are tested positive during pre medical test for insurance either you are asked to produce more documents to prove you don’t consume drugs or, your insurance policy application could be denied outright. Once your application is rejected, for life time while applying for any policy after that you have to mention reason for rejection of the previous policy.
6. Lying on your Insurance Policy
Insurance is contract of utmost good faith. As insured you are expected to disclose all the fact related to your life insurance policy. Any act of non discloser is deemed as intentional and if found at the time of claim, will result in rejection of claim by insurer. So It’s advisable to disclose all the fact and personal details while filling the application form.
7. Lifestyle
Nowadays hectic and stressful lifestyle has affected health of many people. Working for extended hours, junk foods, poor diet, no time for exercise etc. its established that they are associated with poorer health. Insurer evaluates various factors like your height & weight and medical condition, if not found healthy, increase your cost of insurance.
These were the 7 habits that you should control to reduce your insurance cost drastically.
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