How To Prepare for a Life Insurance Medical – Episode 275

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[00:03] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler. Welcome to another episode of the Prosperity Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about life insurance medical, and we’re going to discuss what a life insurance medical is, how to prepare for it, and what you should expect. This is relevant today because I just had another life insurance medical this morning. So I’m looking down at my arm and I see that I have a little dot on my arm and it’s a little sore and we’ll talk about why that happened. So Kim, are you there with us? I am. Sorry to laugh at your dot on your arm.

[00:56] Luckily, she was really good and she was thorough and fast. But I think a lot of times people when they’re first starting or if they haven’t had any life insurance policy for a while, you know, maybe it could be a little scared or not sure or worse. And this is honestly the worst thing to do, which would be to put it off to say, hey, when I’m healthier or when I’ve got a life that’s not as stressful, then I’ll get life insurance. Don’t do that. It’s not worth it. Would you agree? Absolutely. Because those types of things really don’t impact how you’re going to qualify consequently and how the life insurance is going to be priced. The things that impact life insurance price are things like untreated high blood pressure,

[01:43] which OK, you could say I’m a little stressed. Now, not enough stressed that you’re going to die and so it’s not going to impact your life insurance premiums. Or you could say, you know, I’m a little overweight or what have you. Again, not enough that it’s going to impact your life insurance premiums. And yet people do need to be aware that there is a physical exam. So you called it a medical or physical exam. And the people that do these physical exams come to your home or office and they do draw blood. They take urine samples and they ask a bunch of medical questions. They get your height and your weight. And depending on how old you are and how much you’re applying for, sometimes they will do what’s called a resting EKG, where you just lying down and they’re taking

[02:27] your heart information. Sometimes for the much larger amounts, they will have you actually go to somewhere that you could get, for example, an EKG on a treadmill or something like that. But those are pretty big dollar figures. Sometimes additionally, they will have a phone interview that occurs in addition to the medical, just like triple checking everything and sometimes checking in a little on the finances, i.e. income and net worth and that type of thing. So those are all part of the process of getting a life insurance physical. And it is something that people should be doing without a whole lot of thought. I mean, it really doesn’t take a lot of preparation or whatnot. Now I might suggest that you fast before the physical.

[03:15] So if they’re going to come, have them come in the morning and just basically drink water, no coffee, no heavy breakfast, things like that. What you eat the night before, not overly critical. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t go out and have a, you know, bar evening with the boys, but it’s not anything that you need to be overly obsessive about. Again, at the higher amounts, you know, maybe a little bit more careful. But as a general rule of thumb, nothing specific is needed. Although, Spencer, I’m curious, did the company that you are getting your approval through, did they send you any information ahead of time with some suggestions? They sent a little bit of information. So one was to fast at least 12 hours before the medical to not have any

[04:07] coffee or creamer in it. And then to, here’s a surprise. She asked if I had any vitamins last night. OK, so I thought, OK, I haven’t been asked that one before. I can have water. And it was just those simple things. Now, granted, a couple of weeks ago, maybe about a week ago, when I set all this up, I thought, oh, maybe I should, maybe I should be eating the best diet and the best medicals. And then I think about, yeah, a couple of hours into it, I thought, no, I’m not going to do that. That didn’t take long. Absolutely good decision because that’s not going to have an impact at all. They’re looking for things that are much more about longevity and about things that you could not have an impact on even over the course of a

[04:58] month or so. Now, I will say that there are times when a life insurance exam does bring up something that the person might not be aware of. And in that instance, they are recommended that they go see their doctor because typically the life insurance examiner as well as the life insurance agent and anybody on their team is not really privy to the exam results. And you do, as the consumer, get sent some basic information about your exam results. That’s interesting. I don’t think it’s super helpful. All the confidential, important information is only to be communicated to your doctor. And yet you can ask that those physical exam results be sent to your doctor. So you can get the benefit of it, if you will.

[05:50] And there’s no cost to do a physical exam. The medical is paid for by the insurance company. And so that’s a nice thing that if you want that info to go to your doctor, you certainly can. But the agent is typically not going to know much at really any stage of the game. Now, if for whatever reason the insurance company chose to decline you, then of course the agent would know that. And they might know like one little sentence as to the reason. There’s also something called a rating. In other words, most people get approved preferred or even preferred plus or various insurance companies have different names, but like tippy top, if you will. But a lot of people just get standard or something preferred is kind

[06:32] of standard and they don’t get tippy top because you have to be absolutely positively the perfect physical specimen. And it is not matter what you eat in the last seven days, and that’s not going to have an impact on it. And then of course, there are rating tables. So either ABCDEFG, I think they even H-I-J-K-L I think I’ve seen, or sometimes one, two, three on the way down that people will get. And again, these are because there’s life threatening issues, not imminent, but something that could affect your longevity, like maybe pre-diabetes issue or heart issues or blood pressure, or all kinds of things, frankly, but sometimes the insurance company will come back with a rating. And then again, the agent may know like one sentence about it,

[07:21] but that’s going to be about it. Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting. So here I want to get your take on a couple of things, because I think it’ll be valuable for listeners because one, I just went through this, but if you’re preparing, there’s actually some work that you can do in advance. And I am, in my mind, I’m looking at it as a couple of different timelines. So there’s a timeline of a year and there’s some questions they ask, Hey, in the past year, have you been involved with, you know, extreme sports or bungee jumping or skydiving or things like that, you know, past five years, have you been a smoker? And then, you know, things like that. So if you’re thinking of the future, if you happen to be in

[08:02] your 20s, your 30s, 40s, and you’re thinking that income will change, or you’ve now got some different wealth goals, think five years down the line or a year down the line, and then you can start to make some better decisions. Yes, I think that is very valid because you do want to be taking the best care of your transportation system, if you will, i.e. your body, right? And so as a long term impact, and for the good of your health and your ability to be active and live as long as possible and live healthy as long as possible, and even die healthy, those are things that you would want to do. And it is good if the life insurance exam or the process of getting approved. Yes, absolutely. So now we’ve established the baseline of what happens for

[08:52] a life insurance exam. And I’ll tell you listeners, it’s not that bad, regardless of how old you are. Don’t be threatened. It’s a really easy event. Don’t put it off. The biggest thing to really think about is what is your life insurance going to do for you? Now, for me, I’m not a licensed life insurance advisor. So I get to say this from one listener to another, and I hope I’m being as genuine as possible, but there are a lot of different options out there and you can look and you can find what matches with your wealth goals. And so oftentimes people get lost in the complexity and they’ll think, I just I’m scared to do the medical. I don’t want to do that. Or I don’t know, you know, what exact product to do.

[09:42] That’s lost in the weeds. You got to look big picture and see what is your goal and how are you going to get there? And I think one of the most helpful tools is your book, Live Your Life Insurance. I am so glad that you said that because I love that little book and it’s been upgraded so that it has an additional chapter to help a new person as well as it’s super valuable for an existing client of ours to read it again and reread it. I mean, really encourage it about once a year. You can almost think about it like an owner’s manual. It is what you can read or reread to remind you of what you already own. And it’s written even with a glossary because sometimes we forget there’s insurance terms that we may not

[10:33] remember what they are. So if you just need a quick reminder on those, those are in the glossary in the back. And then part one is all about using the cash value while you are living and while you’re accumulating assets. Part two is more about using the death benefit while you are distributing your assets because the presence of the death benefit actually acts as a permission slip to enable you to use your other assets more effectively or more efficiently. And there’s a couple of stories in there of actual clients of ours of what they’ve done both on the accumulation and on the distribution stage. Well, I think it’s again, it’s a short, easy read and it will answer all the questions that you have.

[11:18] So if our listeners check that out, you can go on, I believe that one, you can find a link of it on your site at partnersforprosperity.com. And you can also get a hard copy. So you can hold on to that and mark it up and take your notes. And then if you do have questions, use the special email address, hello at partnersforprosperity.com. Any parting questions for our listeners that are kind of on the fence and saying, I think I want to do it, but I’m not quite sure. Well, there’s also a Kindle version and a audio version of the Live Your Life Insurance. So first of all, especially if you’re a podcast listener, maybe you like audio books. So help yourself to that. And it’s read by yours truly.

[12:01] And I hope that that’s valuable to people. And then it’s interesting, you know, us Americans have this big hang up of life insurance. It’s almost weird. I was just speaking with somebody from India the other day and he said, everybody in India buys life insurance. It’s like one of the first things you do when you get out of school. It’s a totally normal transaction. And I will admit to you, Spencer, that that’s one of my long-term goals. Life insurance is such a valuable product to own that I would like to see it as normal to get life insurance as it is a savings account. You know, your typical kid that graduates from college starts his job. Ideally, he gets a checking account and a savings account.

[12:43] And then he should be buying a life insurance policy because that’s the time to start before you use up all your money and you start contributing in a small monthly way. And then ideally you’ll buy two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 policies over the course of your life. I know for me, I bought one every three or four years as I grew up through my late twenties, thirties, even into my forties. And I’ve slowed down now because we actually have quite a few between myself, my husband, kids, et cetera. And yet it is absolutely positively the reason why our family has the wealth and the liquidity that we do because we have followed this path and they’re boring. Life insurance is boring, but

[13:32] extremely effective. Such a great way to wrap that up. Thank you much, Kim. And for our listeners, please reach out. Hello at partnersforprosperity.com and answers. Kim will be able to answer any questions that you have a great summary to this episode. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.