Chronic illnesses in your family health history have serious consequences on the rate you pay for your life insurance policy. However, many don’t realize family history isn’t the main thing leading to higher insurance premiums.
In this article, we break down the best ways to save money on life insurance when you have health problems in your family tree. We’ll also look at the one factor raising your insurance premium more than any diseases in your genetics.
Table of Contents
Why is it Important to Know Your Family Health History?
You have more in common with your parents than your physical appearance alone. In addition to eye colour, hair type, or the shape of your nose, the genetics you inherit from your family members could also include certain health conditions you’d benefit knowing about.
Knowing more about your genetics is useful for making better choices in life, but it also benefits parents to know which diseases their children may be at a higher risk of developing in the future.
Moreover, if you want to be insured, the insurance company you approach may demand to know everything possible about your family health history before they’ll give you coverage.
Which Health Conditions are in Your Family’s History?
There are many different genetic conditions that may be growing in family trees. Some examples include:
- Heart Disease
- Stroke
- Some Cancers
- Mental Illness
- Birth Defects
- Asthma
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Dementia
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Celiac Disease
- High Blood Pressure
Having knowledge about which health conditions you and each member of your family may endure over your lifetimes, can help you all make better decisions about your lifestyles.
How Do You Get Medical Information from Your Close Relatives?
One’s personal history may be difficult to discuss with your family members. Moreover, many families in the general population may feel concerned about sharing sensitive medical information.
Later in this article, we’ll break down what you can do when you can’t or don’t feel comfortable gathering information about your whole family. For now however, we’ll go over who you should talk to, and what you should write down.
Who in Your Family Should You Talk to?
Start with your immediate blood relatives:
- Parents
- Siblings
- Grandparents
- Aunts
- Uncles
- Nieces & Nephews
Feel free to talk with non-blood related relatives as well, but don’t worry about writing down their genetic information. That is not needed.
Instead, talk to them to fill knowledge gaps about your blood relatives. This is a great help to learn more about close relatives that have since passed away.
What Medical Information Should You Record?
Now that you know which family you will speak to, start planning your questions. Some examples of questions you’ll want to ask are:
- What diseases run in our family history that you are aware of? (…Yes, this one’s obvious, but important to ask nonetheless!)
- How old was so-and-so when they died? What did they die of?
- What are some health issues you have struggled with?
- Which allergies run in our family history?
If you want more ideas of the questions you can ask your family members, we recommend this list by WebMD.
Is Knowing Your Family Health History Important if You Were Adopted?
For anyone adopted, reaching out to your birth parents is not easy — if not impossible.
For individuals who can’t reach their biological parents, it may still be useful to talk to your adoptive family, as your upbringing may still have affected your lifestyle choices. And since the ways we live our lives can affect our health, you may still glean insight from your family.
How Can You Learn About Your Family Health History When You Don’t Have Living Relatives?
You still have some options, even when you don’t have family around to talk to.
There are many websites that can help you learn more about your ancestry. These websites can direct you to things like death certificates so you can discover if a particular condition frequently comes up. You can also learn the age your distant relatives were when they passed away.
How Can You Save Money On Insurance Without Disclosing Personal Information?
For people unable or not comfortable sharing their sensitive family health history, there are other ways you can get insurance coverage and still save money.
1. Look into a “No-Medical” Insurance Plan
No-medical life insurance is a great way to get coverage for your entire family without ever needing to visit a doctor or pry personal info out of your family.
That means even if you don’t have access to your family health history, or your history carries too many risks to be approved by most insurers, you can still be covered with affordable premiums when you go with a no-medical insurance policy.
- LEARN MORE: What is No Medical Life Insurance?
2. Make Certain Lifestyle Changes
Being proactive about healthy lifestyle choices can do wonders in getting more affordable benefits. Showing that you are regularly exercising and eating healthy can mean cheaper insurance.
Additionally, if you smoke cigarettes, quit! Smoking will significantly increase the rate you pay for insurance premiums.
3. Dangerous Jobs are More Expensive
Some jobs with heightened risks are more expensive to insure than those with lower risks. For example, people working on the frontlines of resource extraction are much more likely to get hurt on the job than someone working in an office building.
Of course, when you take pride in the work you do, and furthermore don’t have the ability to be retrained in something less risky, it’s very reasonable you won’t leave your career any time soon.
People in that position may be much better off with a plan that isn’t affected by their career choice if they want to save money.
- LEARN MORE: How Much Insurance Do I Need?
But overall, there’s only one factor that saves you the most money…
What’s the #1 Factor Making Insurance Rates Costly? It’s NOT Your Family Health History.
Regardless of your family health history or your lifestyle choices, there is one thing that impacts your premiums more than all other factors.
So what is it? Your age.
The best thing you can do to get affordable life insurance is simple: Don’t wait.
Getting the right insurance coverage while you are still young means you could be grandfathered into a low rate when you renew. That means it doesn’t matter what’s inside your family health history. You get better rates because you signed up young.
At the same time, if you already know what’s hiding in your genetics, why not get ahead of the curb? Getting a consistent low rate early on is a pretty smart choice for most people. This is especially the case for parents looking to protect their kid’s financial future.
- KEEP READING: How to Save Money on your Term Life Insurance
Key Takeaways
- Your family health history may be required to get some types of insurance coverage
- Certain conditions, such as; heart disease, high cholesterol, and stroke can be inherited through your genes
- Talking to your immediate blood relatives can help you learn your family health history
- Speaking with non-genetic relatives can still help you gain insight about a condition related to your lifestyle and personal choices
- You can leverage ancestry websites to learn about distant and deceased relatives
- No-medical insurance policies are a great choice for people unwilling or unable to get sensitive info on their family health history
- Making healthier choices in your life can help make premiums cheaper.
- The sooner you enroll into an insurance plan, the more affordable rates will be
- Depending on your plan, you can keep your low rates when you renew it
Don’t Wait! Be Proactive & Have Affordable Insurance — Long-Term.
You can get affordable insurance even if your your family tree has a high risk for certain conditions. That’s because the longer you wait, the more your policy costs.
Talk to our experts now. You’ll find out just how much you could be saving.
- There’s NO medical exams or doctor visits, including when you renew
- Up to $1,500,000 in coverage, paid to your beneficiaries tax-free
- You have the flexibility to cover specific periods of time, such as when your kids are still living at home
- Guaranteed approval — even with pre-existing conditions
Start now by filling out the simple questionnaire via the button below:
