The Insurance Buying Guide: Hobbies

Even if your occupation is relatively risk-free, what about your hobbies? Such hobbies as skin diving, scuba diving, sky diving and auto racing are certainly more hazardous than golf or tennis. For this reason, the insurance company will ask if you have any high-risk hobbies when it's considering your application for disability income. If you answer yes, you'll have to fill out an avocation questionnaire, providing more specific information about your hobby.

Example: Gail worked her way through school as a scuba diving instructor. Now, as a marketing executive for a computer software company, she still dives occasionally -- on weekends, vacations and whenever else time allows. After she submits an application for disability insurance, the company writes back to her and asks her to fill out a questionnaire about her hobby. It includes questions about the location of these dives, frequency, depths, etc.

The insurance company may determine that Gail dives occasionally enough that the hobby doesn't pose much of an additional risk. More likely, though, it will determine that her diving does make her more likely to suffer a disabling injury.

The company may sell Gail the policy. But it probably will add a surcharge to her premiums to reflect the added risk that scuba diving presents.