I met with a financial planner yesterday to discuss possibly moving some of my investments to his company. During the discussion, he also asked about my life insurance policies to see if his company could give me better rates. He said that if I haven’t gotten new pricing over the past 10 years or so, I am probably paying too much. One policy is a whole life that I got in 1988 and two others (term and whole life) were taken out in 1995. The whole life policies have cash value that I could cash in, so my initial thought was to drop those policies and go with (presumably) lower cost policies with this other company.Then he said something interesting. He said something like, ‘as long as you don’t have diabetes or something and are uninsurable, we should be able to beat their rates.’ This brings up several questions:
1) If you do have diabetes, are you uninsurable in terms of new life insurance policies?
2) If not, do the rates go up significantly versus non-diabetes? I’ve heard of smoking and non-smoking rates, but diabetes and non-diabetes rates?!?
3) This may be a stupid question – but what determines whether you have diabetes or not? My B/S level was slightly elevated a couple of years ago and my Dr. said I should watch my diet and exercise more. She did not say I was diabetic, but that I was likely to become diabetic unless I watched my diet/exercise. I started testing to monitor my B/S level and it swings pretty widely (75-250) depending upon whether I test after a 30 minute workout or after a big meal. My recent average appears to be ~130. I was told there is no such thing as a “borderline diabetic,” but does someone give you a certificate or pronounce you as diabetic?
4) If I fill out an insurance application and it asks me if I am diabetic, and I truthfully (to my knowledge) answer “no,” do I run the risk of losing the insurance if/when the insurance company later finds out I was being monitored by a Dr. for the early stages of diabetes?
If the cost or risk of canceling my current policies and shifting to another insurance company is too great, it may be better for me to stay with what I have.
Sorry for the long posting, but I don’t get time to check with website often and I wanted to get as much detail in this note. Thanks in advance for any thoughtful replies.
Joe
