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The best way to lower insurance costs is with your fitness journey. This article discusses five ways to use your fitness journey to reduce insurance costs. It’s no secret that the cost of living is high. And with so many things to spend money on, it’s hard to figure out where you should start cutting back.
But one place you might not have considered is your insurance premiums! However, with some proactive steps and a few changes in lifestyle habits, it’s possible to lower your insurance rates by 40% or more! A fitness journey causes you to engage in behaviors that reduce your level of risk and insurance premium costs.
Insurance is about risk aversion
Insurance aims to minimize risk for the insurer and insurance company. Thus, people who engage in risky behaviors can expect to pay more for insurance. Insurance companies do an excellent job of identifying all the direct and indirect ways behaviors can create a loss of health, life, and property.
Insurance companies do not disclose their formulas for assessing risk to prevent applicants from manipulating the system. As a result, an application’s simple, innocent response can cause you to pay a higher insurance premium.
Insurance companies ask you questions, but they also rely on databanks to check your history for indicators of credit, criminal, driving, health, and claims that help them assess your level of risk. In addition, some insurance companies ask you to release records and complete a physical examination.
Pre-Policy Medical Examination
This pre-policy medical examination is a series of procedures or tests you must undergo by necessity, particularly if you are above 40 or 45 years old. This way, the insurer can be sure about your current medical fitness and if there are any pre-existing medical conditions.
It isn’t uncommon for private health insurance plans to require different tests, and insurers may also demand distinct tests. However, expect to undergo a vital signs examination, urine and blood tests, an electrocardiogram, and a cholesterol level test. Before offering you a plan, more thorough insurance providers may even screen you for nicotine, particular prescription medications, or illegal drugs.
Thus, a healthy lifestyle reduces your risk and shows that you intend to live a low-risk lifestyle, which means the insurance companies can expect to pay out later than sooner. Here is the countdown of our five ways to use your fitness journey to lower your risk and insurance costs:
5. Drink Less Alcohol
A little wine is superb for the stomach and makes the heart merry, but too much destroys your health and causes you to make poor decisions. Drinking less alcohol is an excellent way to lower insurance costs. On the other hand, too much alcohol makes it impossible to lose weight and damages the brain, kidneys, heart, and liver. These four organs are 51% of your metabolism. Not only that, but DUIs cause most automobile fatalities. At the same time, hangovers cause many people to skip out on work, the gym, and other commitments.
Thus, alcohol can wreak havoc on a person’s life when not consumed responsibly. Also, this has not gone unnoticed by many insurance providers. As a result, those who drink alcohol regularly expect higher health, life, and car insurance premiums.
To improve your health and reduce your insurance premiums, drink alcohol in moderation. One or two glasses daily are considered moderate, depending on your size and tolerance. Also, it’s best to drink water with and after drinking alcohol.
In addition, make sure not to drink on an empty stomach. And you should never drink and drive, as this will increase your insurance premiums and drastically affect the quality and length of your life. Finally, if your fitness goal is to sport a six-pack, you need only to drink socially once or twice a month.
4. Stop smoking
The only thing that should go into your lungs is oxygen. Giving up this unhealthy habit is an excellent way to lower insurance costs. The lungs are a delicate organ, but they handle your overall cardiovascular fitness. In addition, they supply oxygen to every muscle and organ in the body. So it’s best to ensure they are at total capacity if you want to live a healthy and long life.
Smoking makes it difficult to complete a fitness journey, but it also threatens your health. Many studies support the health dangers of smoking. In addition, you can expect to cut 10 to 20 years off your life expectancy by smoking tobacco.
In addition, smoking is quite expensive and requires a lot of time. Not only do smokers take more breaks on the job, but you can see them driving automobiles with one hand as they need the other hand to hold the cigarette. Driving with one hand is not safe and can lead to automobile accidents. In addition, smoking cigarettes requires a person’s attention as they must safely dispose of the ashes from the cigarettes.
Thus, cigarettes are just one cost of smoking. Health, auto, home, and life insurance premiums can increase because of cigarettes and the accidents that cigarettes cause. There have been many incidents of cigarettes causing automobile accidents. Also, cigarettes cause many fires in homes, woods, and other places.
When you stop smoking, let your insurance companies know. Then, you can expect your lungs and health to clear up quickly, as the lungs can bounce back soon from damage caused by smoking cigarettes.
3. Avoid Toxic Relationships
Most people underestimate toxic relationships and do not calculate their physical, emotional, social, and economic damage correctly. But avoiding unhealthy relationships is an excellent way to lower insurance costs.
Toxic relationships can lead to sexually transmitted diseases, emotional stress, bad credit, domestic violence, criminal records, divorces, bankruptcy, and mental breakdowns. In addition, the stress caused by toxic relationships is a silent killer and a leading cause of heart attacks and strokes. Also, stress activates hormones that cause the body to store extra body fat. Finally, stress can lead to high blood pressure and depression as well.
The cost of toxic relationships is not lost on insurance companies. As a result, many offer discounts to applicants who are married. While marriage is not the only healthy and positive relationship, it is one way that insurance companies can verify that a person has avoided toxic relationships. Toxic relationships affect health, car, and life insurance.
By avoiding or moving on from a toxic relationship, a person can make better decisions, save money, and improve their emotional, mental, physical, and sexual health. Healthy relationships also allow people to focus on their career, financial, social, and health goals better. Unfortunately, toxic relationships cause many to waste time, energy, and emotions on negative feelings and thoughts.
If you are in a toxic relationship, we encourage you to get help if you don’t feel strong enough to move on. Like drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, toxic relationships are dangerous but also addictive and challenging to break away from.
Expect to pay higher premiums if an insurance company determines you are in dangerous relationships through your credit, criminal history, medical records, or marital status. While insurance companies may not penalize you in certain situations, you will receive no discounts they offer to people in positive relationships.
2. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day
Most health organizations recommend that you exercise at least 30 minutes a day, for good reason. Exercise is an excellent way to lower insurance costs. So why do you think most employers encourage exercise through discounts on gym memberships? The benefits of exercise are countless, from improving your health, emotions, finances, relationships, and self-esteem. In addition, exercise reduces insurance premiums for health and life insurance.
Exercise helps fix many health-related problems. Also, this is an excellent time to talk about BMI (body mass index). Research has long shown a connection between a person’s BMI and life expectancy. As your BMI goes up, your life expectancy goes down. You can find your BMI using your height and body weight. So any time you provide an insurance company with your height and body weight, they now have crucial factors in assessing your BMI and level of risk.
Exercise affects your health, but it also affects your relationships. By going to the gym or park, you are sure to meet like-minded individuals who share an interest in improving the quality and longevity of life. People who workout are proactive and positive. They encourage, compliment, and support each other. Also, exercise can improve existing relationships as it is attractive to see someone accomplish a goal while sporting a new, improved sexy body.
Finally, you can use exercise to replace unhealthy habits and toxic relationships that increase your risk and insurance premiums. For example, exercise encourages you to stop drinking and smoking. People who exercise while smoking and drinking struggle during their workout sessions. They will either give up cigarettes and alcohol to make the exercise easier or stop exercising to enjoy the alcohol and cigarettes without immediate consequences. But rest assured, one will eventually eliminate the other.
1. Eat a healthy diet
Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, said, let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. Eating a healthy diet is an excellent way to lower insurance costs. No one can argue the importance of eating healthy. But did you know it is cheaper to eat healthily and not because of the many benefits of eating healthy?
When you eat a well-balanced diet, your grocery bill will be less. You can also enjoy the numerous health, social, and financial benefits of eating healthily. So how does it work? Most people overdo the protein, fats, or carbohydrates while ignoring the other food groups. Also, this is not only a health-wise mistake but also leads to a more costly grocery bill. By taking a balanced approach, you will find that you can combine the right foods to give you nutrients, keep you satisfied, and lower your grocery cost.
A balanced meal will include protein, fat, and two carbohydrates. An example is baked chicken, navy beans, rice, and broccoli. While the meat, fruit, and vegetables are a little pricey, the beans and rice are dirt cheap. Many meals, when homecooked, come with potatoes, rice, beans, and pasta, all of which are cost-efficient and keep you full longer.
Thus eating healthy saves your wallet, gives you a new hobby (cooking and shopping better), and reduces your BMI. Like exercise, eating healthy leads to a healthier lifestyle that causes you to spend your time more wisely on the things that matter the most.
In addition, you will discover that eating healthy comes with its environment and culture. It will replace negative places and people while allowing you to spend quality time with yourself and your family. Cooking is a great hobby that offers many benefits, and since you have to eat, you get to kill two birds with one stone.
The last word on lower insurance costs with a fitness journey
Insurance is about removing risk. Thus if the risk is low or doesn’t exist, then the insurance cost is low or not necessary. While it is true that we cannot remove risk from life altogether, we can lower it by making wise decisions. The five ways a fitness journey can reduce insurance costs show how healthy behaviors help you lower insurance costs.
You need to take advantage of them, seeing your insurance premiums decrease. The behaviors that help you on a fitness journey improve your health, social life, finances, and time management. Healthy behaviors save time, money, relationships, and health. By making healthy decisions, you will reduce the risk of unhealthy choices.
You can quickly observe healthy behaviors in your standard of living and lifestyle. Thus medical exams, criminal history, employment history, driving record, financial records, and credit reports will indicate wise choices while on a fitness journey.
Finally, shopping around every six months for insurance is a best practice to take advantage of the continued changes in your lifestyle. Unfortunately, as some people get older, their insurance premiums remain the same despite the discounts given to older people for making wiser decisions. The main reason is they never asked for discounts by shopping around for a better deal.
