High Risk Lifestyle and Life Insurance

You eat healthy and keep yourself in tip–top shape. You're the outdoorsy type that loves extreme sports like mountain biking, rafting, scuba diving, or snowboarding on a powder day. You also want to buy life insurance, but may find that this extreme sports lifestyle of yours puts you in the "high risk" category, which means higher life insurance premiums.

Assessing Your Life Insurance Risk

Insurance companies favor those that make an effort to take care of their bodies by not smoking, keeping themselves at a healthy weight and getting regular exercise. But the minute you reveal that your personal hobbies include sky diving or mountain climbing, the red flags go up.

Typically, one of the first questions asked when you're shopping for life insurance online or working with an insurance agent relates to whether you are a smoker or nonsmoker. The latter, obviously receives a better rate than the former.

Other factors that can affect your life insurance premium are:

• Driving record – if you have a number of speeding tickets or have received citations for reckless driving, this could negatively affect your premium.

• Physical health – this is pretty self–explanatory. If you have high cholesterol and are taking Lipitor, or if you are diabetic, expect your premium to be higher than those considered to be healthy.

• Mental health – while not all forms of depression are considered high–risk by insurance companies, this may be the case for those that have a long history of depression and the need for anti–depressants.

• Family health – if your mother or father's side of the family has a history of heart attacks or other types of diseases, life insurance companies expect that you'll experience the same thing. This will be a factor when assessing your risk, but a clean bill of health from your doctor and evidence of a healthy lifestyle could help keep your premium lower than if you were following in your family's footsteps.

The High Risk Life Insurance Cost of Extreme Hobbies

You may not be able to hide the fact that you've gotten two speeding tickets in the past five years, but how will an insurance company know that every winter you like to drop out of a helicopter to ski that virgin snow?

If something were to go wrong and you die from this type of activity, and the insurance company discovers that you did not disclose this as one of your hobbies, it could deny your family the financial security of your life insurance policy.

So your best bet is to be honest. Just know that your high risk hobbies will come at a price, sometimes twice the premium of what your life insurance policy would cost you if your lifestyle was limited to long walks on the beach or playing chess in a park.

The good news is it's easy to shop online for high risk life insurance. This enables you to receive multiple life insurance quotes and compare them based on price and coverage. Then you can relax and enjoy your ride up the mountain or dive into the Great Barrier Reef, knowing your family, or even your business, is financially secure.

See how much you could save today on your life insurance. Get your free life insurance quotes today!

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