In addition, the prices of these policies always seem extremely low. If I am in poor health, why would I give the insurance company a reason to give me a higher quote on my life insurance? It almost seems as though the insurance companies themselves could be taking a lot of risk in selling policies of this kind to thousands and thousands of people without knowing their medical condition. After all, anyone would prefer life insurance without physical exam, all else being equal, so their potential losses would be huge if the beneficiaries of their risky policies tried to collect all at once.

Well, you can be pretty sure that that is not the case, that the insurance companies are not gambling with their balance sheets. So how can they do this?

When you choose to buy life insurance with no physical, you’re essentially requesting that the insurance company look at you in the most general terms. You are telling them to categorize you in terms of average risk across the entire population, without any regard at all for your physical condition. When the company looks at your likelihood of passing away in the next year or next 20 years, in light of very specific statistics that it has for quantifying the mortality rate across the whole population, they will not give you credit for being in good health. They will simply assume that you’re in average health, and base their rate quote on average mortality risk, which naturally is higher than it is for people in excellent health.

It is easy to assume that your life insurance premiums will be higher if you take a medical exam and find that you are less than perfect health. But you still would not know just how risky of a proposition it is to insuring you, for the insurance company. Remember, we’re not comparing your condition to that of people who are in perfect health. You would be trying to establish that your condition is better than average. If you have a couple of minor health problems you may still be much more desirable as a quantifiable risk than the “average” person. Therefore the premiums you pay would still be lower.

It goes without saying that if you are in good or very good health, you will benefit if your insurer knows about it, even if they seem to really want to sell you life insurance, no physical exam required. The prospect of life insurance without physical should be looking a little less attractive by now.

A final thought: it stands to reason that the most aggressive advertising campaigns undertaken by insurance companies would be those that have the highest profit margins. Might this be a reason why advertising for “life insurance no physical” can be found on bus benches, a top taxicabs, and on direct-mail fliers that you receive every single day? If you think you’re in pretty good health, is most likely a good idea to prove that you are, then in essence force the insurance company to give you credit for it.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many advertisements for life insurance of the type that promise to guarantee you a policy? Where are the ads encouraging you to get life insurance that would require that you take a medical exam as a condition of being granted a policy? Is it possible that insurance companies would rather sell you a guaranteed life insurance policy?

Yes it is possible, and in this brief article I will explain why you have to pay more for this guarantee. I will also tell you why applying for life insurance with no guarantee of being insured, that also involves the hassle of a medical checkup, might actually be the better route to take.

Life insurance companies have very sophisticated methods to determine how much risk they are undertaking when they sell you a policy. The more information they have, the better they can quantify their risk. If you are in poor health and the insurance company knows about it, you may still be able to find life insurance coverage, though naturally it will cost you more. But what if you’re in average or even above average health? Unless this is documented by a complete physical, the company has no way of essentially giving you credit for it and is forced to keep you in the “unknown” category. Note that it really cannot even be assumed that you are in average health in this case, because without a physical there is no way to make any assumptions about your health at all.

You can be sure that an insurance company that offers you a guaranteed acceptance term life insurance will cover themselves against the possibility that you have unknown health problems. This is the reason why the “guarantee” portion of the policy will make it more expensive to you then similar coverage for which you agree to undergo a medical exam. They know how attractive and convenient guarantee issue life insurance sounds to you, hence the aggressive advertisements, but as with so many products that offer convenience, you run the risk of overpaying for the feature. Remember that this is not lunch-at-a-drive-through-restaurant convenience. This is convenience that you might pay for for 20 or 30 years. It might be one of those times that you should accept a couple of hours of inconvenience.

So what if your medical exam reveals that you are in less than perfect health? There is of course a chance that you might have a previously undiagnosed condition that renders you uninsurable. Barring that, even with minor ailments you might be surprised to learn that your premium payments might still be lower than if you had gone for the guaranteed issue life insurance. After all, the point here was to give the insurance company an objective indication as to your health, not necessarily to prove that you have no health problems at all, though of course that’s the best case scenario. Giving them a medical basis for ruling out the presence of ailments that make it statistically much more likely that you will pass away during the term of your policy, should definitely result in lower premiums for you, with a NON-guaranteed life insurance policy. And by the way, you might be in better condition than you think.

Guaranteed acceptance life insurance sounds great until you consider just how much more you will spend to save a little time. Over the long run, is it really worth it?

Whole life insurance is a form of permanent life insurance, which means that it has a cash value amount that builds up over time based on the premiums that you pay over the years, and in the case of whole life, the interest that accrues on those premiums. Whole life is the simplest form of permanent insurance in that you may borrow against the policy, but you have very little additional flexibility in terms of where you can invest the policy’s cash value amount. As long as you make your premium payments each month, your loved ones, or beneficiaries, will receive a payout when you pass away.

The first thing to decide is what kind of permanent life insurance would suit your needs the best, or if in fact a term policy would be most appropriate. Assuming you have settled on whole life, there is a critical question to consider before you buy insurance based on instant whole life insurance quotes. And that is: what are you forfeiting when you act on an “instant” quote?

Insurance companies aggressively advertise instant quote life insurance because they know the people who are in less than optimal health need a way to get life insurance without getting a medical examination. They know how attractive the prospect is even to people who may be in good health, but simply not sure what a doctor’s checkup might reveal about their overall condition. As low as an instant whole life insurance quote may appear to be, you can be sure that either there is padding built into the premium price or the payout is lower than it would be otherwise, based on the increased risk that the insurance company has to take to insure people without knowing about possible health issues.

How to get around these increased premiums or lower payout? Take a deep breath and buy life insurance that requires a medical exam. Not only will the premiums be lower for similar amounts of coverage, you might surprise yourself by being in better health than you thought. Even if you’re not in perfect health, you might still get a better deal by submitting to the medical exam.

Any responsible person who has loved ones who depend on him or her financially had really better consider buying life insurance. This doesn’t have to be a morbid or unpleasant experience; you simply educate yourself through a site like Life Insurance Basics, then shop for an affordable life insurance policy, which can also easily be done online. The main reason people resist taking out life insurance policies is that they are afraid that the cost will be prohibitive for them. Fortunately, there is such a thing as affordable life insurance nowadays, even if you are already a senior.

If price is your main concern, get yourself an affordable term life insurance quote, either online or you can enlist the services of agents working for insurance companies. Term life is insurance that is purchased for a fixed amount of time, usually between 10 and 30 years. If the insured person dies during that period then the beneficiaries named in the policy receive the ‘death benefit’ payout. If the policyholder outlives his policy then no benefit is paid. Statistics show that the large majority of people who buy term life do in fact live longer than their insurance, and it’s for this reason that term policies are so cheap. Affordable term life insurance is remarkably cheap if you only look at the monthly premium amount that you pay.

If we are talking about affordability, we would be smart to look at the cost of being insured over our whole life. The problem with term life is that when the policy ends, we are no longer young, and purchasing more insurance in our 50s or 60s will be much more expensive. Buying a permanent plan like whole life, variable life or universal life gives us the peace of mind of knowing that we will be insured as long as we make sure that the police stays in force. However this comes at a price– often permanent insurance is several times as expensive as term. In the end, most unbiased experts think that term life is the best bet, for most people. How to get around the problem of having nothing to show for the premiums you will have paid for decades if you survive your policy? Save and invest responsibly, rather than hoping that a ‘forced savings’ strategy (which agents will often tout as a feature of permanent life insurance) will satisfy all you retirement needs. In the end, the cheapest life insurance option/most affordable life insurance quote may very well be the smartest too.

You may think to yourself that finding affordable policies for seniors is close to impossible, as life insurance rates commonly increase as policyholders become older (unless one has a level term plan, ie with constant payments, that is still in force when we are older). Getting term life insurance up to the age of 50 is quite affordable, but it quickly starts to get expensive after that, and after the age of 65 or so you will have little choice but to get whole life insurance if you want to be insured.

When it comes to life insurance, affordability is best achieved by starting to plan early.

Life Insurance is something to which every responsible person should attend, if they have a family or loved ones who would be negatively impacted financially by their untimely absence. No one likes to think about things like this, but finding and buying an insurance policy should actually be approached aggressively because of the amount of time that one will spend paying the premiums.

Since you will spend decades paying based on the choice you make now, do it right by spending some time educating yourself on the subject–Life Insurance Basics Guide was created exactly for this purpose. Then, armed with a little education, get online and search for a cheap life insurance quote that suits you. Cheap life insurance policies can be pretty easy to find online or by talking to an agent, but keep in mind: the cheapest life insurance is not necessarily the most suitable for you and your family.

There are a few forms of cheap life insurance policies, but one takeaway from this short introduction should be this: Cheap term life insurance will cost you less than cheap whole life insurance because term life doesn’t have an additional investment component built into it, as whole life does. It is life insurance for a fixed term for a fixed monthly premium, with an amount paid to the beneficiaries should the insured person die during that term. There is no payout if the person survives the policy term. One should understand what one is not getting, should he buy a term policy.

Permanent insurance, on the other hand, is a category of insurance that covers the policy holder for as long as he pays his premiums. There is a guaranteed payout upon the death of the insured, and it is this guarantee, as well as the fact that this insurance has flexibility regarding access to the cash value that builds up in the policy, that makes it more expensive.

A few of the main sub-types of permanent insurance are whole life insurance, universal life insurance, or variable universal life insurance. These let you control the policy cash value by making investments with the funds, and by borrowing against the policy. The good thing about these types of policies is that these can be customized to the different needs of the people who are buying them, but then they usually can’t be regarded as cheap life insurance.

While the cheapest life insurance is usually term life, the trade off here is very important to have clear in your mind before you buy it, and this is takeaway #2 from this article: If you live beyond the term of the policy, it may be very expensive to get insurance at the age you’ll be at that time. Another term life policy will start to get expensive quickly after the age of about 50, and after 65 or you may not be able to get term life from most insurance companies at all. Having a permanent life insurance policy of whatever kind, though it will be more expensive to pay into, will at least give you some peace of mind knowing that you’ll never be without life insurance, as long as you pay your premiums. Do be skeptical if an agent tells you unequivocally that a permanent policy is your best bet because of the investment aspect of it though. The fact is that after fees and miscellaneous costs, a permanent policy is not usually a great investment, or cheap life insurance either. Do your homework.