Honesty really is the best policy if you want to live a great life as well as a great life insurance plan.
It is also important to be honest when it comes to life insurance. Because if you don’t, you could potentially hurt your beneficiaries. Read on to learn what is important when it comes to life insurance.
First off, let’s explain what life insurance can do for you. Life insurance is a type of insurance policy that offers people you designate as beneficiaries money if you were to pass away during the life of the policy. Generally speaking, there are two main types of life insurance – term life and whole life insurance. Term life insurance covers you for a term or time period, while whole life insurance covers you for your whole life. Whole life insurance is usually more expensive than term life insurance rates, because of that lifetime coverage.
Life insurance rates can vary, depending upon your health
In addition, generally speaking you are more likely to get a good life insurance deal if you are in good health, especially when it comes to term life insurance. You see, life insurance rates are based on facts and statistics about which people are more like to live a long life. If you smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish, you are statistically more likely to die young.
Some things, like smoking or drinking or doing drugs, are habits that contribute to a shortened life. But, if changed or stopped, especially at a younger age, those habits may have less long-term damage than you might think.
Other things that can affect life insurance rates are diseases like cancer or health issues like diabetes.
Obesity is another health problem that is not just hurting people’s health; it is also affecting their life insurance rates.
But here’s the most important thing to know about life insurance, and what health issues can do to the rates – while such issues may potentially cause problems when it comes to what you pay for it, it is crucial that you tell the truth when filling out the application for life insurance. That is because lies on the application can cause the policy to be rejected, or potentially even cause the policy to be cancelled.
When you sign a life insurance policy, you agree that you are telling the truth, until penalty of law. But while you may think it’s a little white lie to claim that you never had cancer when you did, or say that you are a non-smoker when you still smoke cigarettes, those are the kind of lies that can catch up with you. When you take a physical exam for the life insurance policy – something that is required with many policies – your white lies may be found out.
In addition, in most states, there is something called the contestability clause with life insurance. That means that the life insurance company can decide not to pay out on a life insurance policy within the first two years of the policy if you are proven to have lied. For example, if you claimed to be a non-smoker, and then die of emphysema, your policy could be cancelled if your emphysema is proven to have been caused by the smoking. That means that your beneficiaries may not derive any financial benefit from the policy.
Lisa Swan writes on a variety of life insurance topics for Best Life Insurance Deals.
