When it comes to life insurance, it’s no big surprise that things like age, overall health, the presence of disease and habits like smoking have some bearing on your life insurance rates. There are, however, a handful of factors you may not know are also having their say when it comes to tallying up life insurance premiums.
1. What You Consider “Leisure Timeâ€
It may be great exercise. It may even help you to establish lifelong habits and disciplines that will help you succeed, but taking part activities like MX racing or anything that has to do with diving (whether in water or in the air) is considered risky behavior.
2. Downward-Facing Dog
Excluding extreme activities, being a regular participant in any kind of sport or exercise activity is going to be a boon to your life insurance application. And meditating is scientifically proven to provide immediate health benefits and some underwriters will count meditating to your credit.
3. The Fact That You Quit Smoking Nine Years Ago
It takes a full decade of being nicotine-free to get back in the good graces of most insurance underwriters. That’s when your rating will go back to non-smoker status.
4. Skipping Your Six-Month Checkup
Insurance underwriters will ask you to sign a privacy waiver to that they can get medical information about you from your doctor. What’s that? Haven’t seen your doctor in a while? That will almost certainly count against you. Insurance clients are generally rewarded for being good stewards of their own health.
5. Your Mother’s Smoking Habit
It smells a little like adding insult to injury, but many insurance companies will penalize you if you have a parent who lives with or died from diseases like cancer and heart disease, even when those diseases can directly be attributed to bad habits they may have had.
6. Your Credit Score
In the last few years, most of us have taken some kind of hit to our FICO score. Take heart. Consistency pays off. But until you are completely out of a financial mess, your lowered credit score may affect your insurance premiums.
7. Your Gender
Like it or not, women tend to outlive men. As such, insurance underwriters offer more favorable insurance premiums to women than they do to men, all other things being equal.
8. Your Driving Record
At this point in history, most underwriters will pull your driving record. You typically have nothing to worry about unless you have a particularly bad driving record. DUIs, constant speeding tickets and a repertoire of moving violations on your record amount to risky behavior.
9. Being Cock Diesel
Sure, you look awesome in your giant muscles and fitted tee, but on paper, it may look to underwriters like you are simply overweight. That’s because your body mass index (the ratio of body weight to height) is what underwriters use to determine if you are a healthy weight for your height. Overweight people pay more in health insurance and unfortunately, there’s no “Ripped†box on the insurance form.
10. Your Beloved Starbucks Card
This may be hard to swallow, but those deliciously invigorating cups of coffee look a lot like elevated blood pressure to many life insurance underwriters. In fact, it is advised that you avoid coffee and caffeinated products altogether for at least one day before you are scheduled to take any sort of medical exam, particularly the one that will be used to determine your life insurance premium.