When shopping for a life insurance policy, it’s natural to want to get the best premium rates that you can. So you shop around between different insurance companies and different brokers to find the best policies for the money. You also weigh out the cost benefit of adding various riders to the policy. All of those efforts are fine, but there’s one more thing that you can do to lower your life insurance quote: lose weight.
An insurance company or broker can’t help you to do that – it is something that you need to do on your own. And you need to do it before applying for your life insurance policy. Once the policy is in force, it will be too late to get any benefit from the weight loss, as premiums on life insurance policies are generally locked in at the time of policy approval and acceptance.
Lower your weight, lower your life insurance quote
When a life insurance company considers issuing a policy on your life, they must first take into account any known risk factors. This includes pre-existing health conditions, dangerous behaviors (indicated by criminal background checks and driving history), and current physical condition.
Your current physical condition includes your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, heart function, and weight-to-height ratio. That last one is where losing weight can help you to lower your premiums.
Life insurance companies use charts to determine specific risk in regard to weight. A single chart can have more than a dozen weight ranges, and each will carry a separate rating. The bands tend to be tight for each rating, such that the loss of just 10 pounds could put you into a more favorable rate category. The loss of 20 to 30 pounds could lower your weight risk by several levels. The loss of just a few pounds can result in a lower premium.
Losing weight can generate other health benefits
There is a secondary benefit to losing weight. The loss of just a few pounds can often translate into lower blood pressure readings, and even lower cholesterol levels. Often the reason why these levels are elevated in the first place is because we are at least a little bit overweight. The loss of a few pounds could possibly drop you from a high reading on your blood pressure or cholesterol, down to a normal range.
The improvement in those readings can result in even more savings in your life insurance premium. Losing weight tends to have a multiplier effect on your health overall, and that will reflect favorably your life insurance premiums.
Be sure to lose the weight well before applying for insurance
If you do intend to lose weight, make sure that you do it well in advance of applying for a life insurance policy. For starters, losing weight can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months, just to lose a few pounds. For another, the insurance company will want to know what your weight is as of the date that you made your application – losing weight afterwards will not benefit you.
There is at least one more timing issue in regard to losing weight. If your weight at the time of your last medical encounter was 20 pounds heavier than what you are at application, the insurance company will often average the two weights, rather than giving you the full benefit of your current weight. They’ll do that under the assumption that your weight tends to fluctuate, and the average is more accurate than the current reading.
But don’t wait too long
If you plan to lose weight before applying for a life insurance policy, just make sure that it won’t take too long to achieve the desired loss. This may make losing a substantial amount of weight – over many months – counterproductive.
If the weight loss effort takes too long, you run the risk of being aged up. Insurance companies determine your weight by your closest birthday. For example, if you are 35 years and four months old at the time of application, you’ll be rated as 35 years for insurance purposes. But if you are 35 years old and seven months, you’ll be considered 36 for insurance purposes. Because life insurance policies are also age-based, the advantage that you gain from losing weight could be offset by the disadvantage of being one year older at the time of application.
That consideration may be cutting things a little bit too fine. Overall, losing weight generally results in better health, and that’s good for your life – and for your life insurance premiums.
