Insurance is always a gamble, a bet actually.

You are betting that you'll eventually get sick or hurt. And your insurance company is betting that you'll stay healthy.

If you stay healthy your whole life, but still pay into insurance, that's great for the insurance company. Actually, it's great for you too, because you got to be healthy for your whole life. But you still lost the bet.

So an insurance company is never going to reward you for being healthy. That's not the terms of the bet.

But here's a secret.

You can reward yourself.

Here's how. Open a Health Savings Account (HSA). Put as much money as you can into it. Tell your insurance company that you want to raise the deductible on your insurance policy as high as it will go. The deductible is the amount you have to pay before the insurance finally kicks in.

Now sit back and relax. You are completely covered for any healthcare crisis. You can use the HSA money for the small stuff and your insurance policy will kick in for the big stuff.

But?

If you don't get sick or hurt, the money will stay in the HSA. Then you'll put in the same amount next year, and it will sit there again. Earning interest, too.

After a while of being healthy, year-after-year, you'll have tens of thousands of dollars sitting there.

And when you retire, your HSA turns into an IRA ? individual retirement account. You can take the money out and live on it.

And guess what? It's your reward for staying healthy. You rewarded yourself for staying healthy, and simultaneously covered yourself just in case you did get sick along the way.

Happy retirement!

Daryl Kulak is the author of Health Insurance Off the Grid, a book that provides a simple, effective plan to reduce insurance costs for the self-employed, unemployed and underinsured. The book is available at the Website http://www.healthoffthegrid.com