Controllable Factors That Affect Your Life Insurance Premiums

Some factors that influence your life insurance premiums (like your age) are beyond your control. However, there are several other factors that you can do something about. Improving these not only helps get you lower premiums, but may also ultimately lengthen your life. 

Improve Your Health 

Poor diet and lack of exercise lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, obesity and diabetes. Begin an exercise routine that combines aerobic exercise with calisthenics or light weight training. Aerobic exercise improves cardiovascular fitness, lowers blood pressure, burns calories, increases metabolic rate and improves your sleep quality. 

Increasing muscle mass through calisthenics, light weight training and other resistance exercises increases your metabolism. The very presence of these enlarged muscles keeps your metabolic rate elevated even when you’re resting. A higher metabolic rate means more calories are burned, which aids in reducing body fat. 

Start a heart healthy diet of fish, lean meat, poultry, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans and nuts. Avoid trans-fats, saturated fats, refined wheat flour and refined sugar. As a general rule, avoid foods that are commercially baked or are highly processed. 

Stop Smoking 

The link between smoking and chronic health problems like heart disease, respiratory problems, cancer and stroke has been known for decades. Smokers may pay as much as 50 percent more for life insurance than nonsmokers. This means that simply quitting smoking by itself can have a dramatic reduction on your life insurance premiums. 

Drive Safely 

People with major violations on their driving record have, on average, shorter life expectancies than those who don’t. Insurance companies pay a lot of attention to these kinds of statistics when assessing the risk of insuring you. Driving by itself is inherently risky. Driving dangerously greatly intensifies this risk. Become a safe driver by observing all traffic laws and driving defensively. If you do this long enough, your driving record can improve and your premiums may go down. 

Curb Dangerous Activities 

Dangerous activities are a way of life for some people, defining who they are. Nevertheless, engaging in them means you are taking on risk, which is the very thing that insurers wish to avoid. The only way they can take you on is by increasing your premiums to cover this. Some activities that may affect your rates include aviation, racing cars/boats/motorcycles, rock climbing, skydiving, base jumping and bungee jumping. Unfortunately, insurers have no choice in this if they wish to stay in business. 

The above controllable factors can either increase or reduce your life insurance premiums depending on how you act on them. The choice is yours to make.  

Can you lower your rates? Call Clarion Pacific Insurance Services at 831-337-4661 for more information on Santa Cruz life insurance.