To swap life insurance for health insurance?

[donniedarko89]

I have struggled with long waiting times with the NHS and enquired about private health insurance. Received a quote for £80 a month with Vitality.

This is within my budget if I cancel life insurance. Both DH and I have death in service benefit at work and the house is paid for (no mortgage). We would probably be OK-ish if the worst happened.

Do you think this is a sensible thing to do, would you make the swap? And does anyone have a good experience with Vitality?

We have had good experiences with Vitality (though not as good as Bupa who were amazing) but that premium seems low, would it definitely cover pre-existing conditions?

Do you have children?

Depends on factors like whether you have children and how much your respective DIS cover with work is. It’s usually a multiple of salary, so will also depend on that.
But if you’re comfortable with the amount of the DIS you’d get from work, then providing you both stay employed then yes I think swapping your personal insurance to health would be a reasonable step. You’d need to reassess if either of you stop benefitting from work DIS though, and it’s possible at that point you’ll have to pay more for a new life insurance contract.

The quote is just for me (DH gets insurance through work)

If you have no mortgage and decent death in service benefits I would do it.

Unless you have lots of young DC which means your DH would need to pay for help or cut his own earnings if anything happened to you. Otherwise you do not really need life insurance anyway

Your DH could check his work policy, most allow you to add a partner for a refuced rate

We only have one DD, so probably fine!

Seconding what @PorkPieandPickle says - our workplace allows us to add household members on and its fab. My last 2 workplaces did this as well so I think it's pretty common.