I am an old woman in her early sixties and I live alone. My husband died five years ago and my children live far from so I don’t see them very often. I know that I am quite old and I also know that once I am gone, my children will have to cope with all the expenses for the funeral, taxes and other obligatory stuff and I don’ t want to leave them with that trouble. That is why I decided to buy life insurance.
I did not know much about it so I went to an insurance company asked for an agent to explain the basics to me. He told me what type of insurance would be best for me to buy and when I asked about the price and the monthly premiums I would have to pay, I found out that those are to be determined according to my health condition and my medical history. I was a relatively healthy person, but when the agent asked me about the height and weight and about my smoking habits I decided to take away a few pounds from my real weight and, of course, I wouldn’t tell him that I was a smoker. There were also some similar questions the answers to which I thought might raise the cost of premium so I made some more adjustments.
My interview with the agent was over and he proposed the premium which I found suitable enough for me to pay. I decided to take the policy and there I was, happy to have managed to work out a nice price. However, the agent said I would also have to go through a medical exam which would be performed by a professional paramedical and that it could be done at my home. And so, the paramedical came to my house and performed a basic medical exam. He also measured my weight which I realized would not match with the information that I had given to the agent, but I hoped it would go unnoticed.
Now I had to wait for the company to process the results. A month passed, two months passed and there still wasn’t a word from the company. After the third month, I received a package from that contained my medical history from my primary doctor, the results of the exam and the application form that I filled out with the agent. There was also a notice that said I had no more right to any kind of insurance at their company due to giving false information. Actually, they compared data from the three documents and realized that I lied.
So, my advice to all of you thinking about life insurance – do not give untrue information and even if you do, make sure that you do it so that the company is not able to find the mismatch. You will only lose some of your precious time and embarrass yourself just like I did.