The final post for Life Insurance Awareness Month is short and simple. There is only one thing I want to get across. Life insurance is cheap! For some reason many people think life insurance is expensive. Health insurance is expensive. Life insurance is not. Sure, if you are 65 years old then you are going to pay much more than a 25 year old. However, for most people cost should not be a reason to not have life insurance.
There are some types of life insurance that requires you to put a good chunk of money toward it each month but for simple term insurance, the cost is fairly inexpensive. Most people under 40 years old can get a 500k policy for less than $50/mo (much less for some people). I think oftentimes individuals are presented with permanent insurance costs and illustrations by insurance salespeople (permanent insurance pays the highest commissions) and they assume that is their only option. However, term life insurance is much cheaper than most. Term is not always the best options but it is almost always the cheapest option.
Here are a few things that do not necessarily affect life insurance costs.
Family History. Most family history does not affect the cost of your life insurance. If you had a parent die of cancer at an early age, you can still get the best rating for life insurance.
Financial Status. Just because you don’t own a home or have many assets does not mean you will be turned down for coverage.
High Blood Pressure and/or Cholesterol. You likely will not be denied insurance for this. In fact, you may be able to still get a healthy rating on your policy. It may not be the healthiest rating but it still comes with a cost reduction from the average policy.
Past Cancer or Disease. If you had cancer in the past but you are now considered healthy, you can likely get a decent rating and cost on life insurance.
There are, however, certain things that can make your cost a higher than it needs to be.
Smoking. This is the number one cause for automatic price increase that could make any policy unaffordable. If you think your cigarettes are expensive wait until you see a 15-20% price increase in your premiums just for smoking.
Weight. If you are overweight you will likely face a higher premium but if you lose weight and get into better shape you can usually request the insurance company to reconsider your price and rating.
Crazy Driving. If you have a lot of traffic violations (i.e. excessive speeding, DUI, wreckless driving) you could face higher ratings.
The best way to find out what, if any, issues you have that could result in a price increase is to apply. It’s better to know for sure that to just assume you can’t afford it.