Life Insurance Now

“The man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.” — Anatole France

Life insurance agents are trained to sell you add-ons to your policy. It’s a lot like a fast food attendant asking you if you want to “supersize” your meal, or if you want fries and a coke with your order. The problem with life insurance add-ons, like fast food extras, is that it’s mostly empty calories. In the case of life insurance, it’s deadly to your wealth instead of your health.

The two main add-on options are the Disability Premium Waiver and the Accidental Death Benefit rider. The purpose of the Disability Premium Waiver is to exempt you from having to pay your insurance premiums if you become permanently disabled. The purpose of the Accidental Death Benefit rider, also known as a “double indemnity clause” is to pay your beneficiary twice the death benefit amount if you die as the result of an accident. Both add-ons seem reasonable and necessary, until you consider the odds of actually needing them and the additional costs to having them.

If you are concerned about becoming disabled during the life of your policy, the Disability Premium Waiver may not be the most cost effective way to protect life insurance premium payments. The cost is simply too much for what you are trying to accomplish. Contributing those extra dollars to a general disability policy would be the best choice to pay all your expenses, including your life insurance premiums. Furthermore, if you purchase the lowest cost term policy for an adequate coverage amount, your premiums will not be a major cost.

An Accidental Death Benefit (ADB) rider could actually cost you more than if you purchased a policy for twice the coverage. For example, let’s assume a 35-year-old male could purchase a $300,000 ten year term policy for $119 per year. Let’s further assume that an ADB rider costs only $.75 per $1000 of coverage. To have the accidental death benefit rider in that scenario he would need to pay an additional $225 per year in premiums bringing the cost of this hypothetical policy to $344 per year.

Instead of spending the extra money on the ADB rider, he could have purchased twice the benefit ($600,000 worth of coverage) for a total premium of only $188 per year. In both cases, if he died accidentally his beneficiary would receive the same amount, but by eliminating the ADB rider to achieve the same benefit amount he saved an extra $156 per year.

Obviously an ADB writer is not a good value. But you will have to run the numbers for yourself to make that determination. If your agent offers you the ADB rider, ask him the cost per $1000 of coverage. Then do the math. Compare the results with a policy for twice the death benefit amount to see if it’s a good deal or not. Is it really just “a few dollars more,” as the agent will tell you?

“A man’s treatment of money is the most decisive test of his character–how he makes it and how he spends it.” — James Moffatt

Once you have established that you need life insurance coverage, the next step is to determine how much your death benefit should be. The higher the amount of the death benefit, the higher the premium you will pay. To get an adequate amount of coverage at the best possible price, you want to estimate your death benefit needs based on a sensible criteria.

Depending on who you ask, the methods for determining the appropriate death benefit vary. Usually it is recommended that the yearly income seeking to be replaced is multiplied by a factor. Some recommend 8-10 times the amount of yearly income required to replace the income of the insured. Others recommend that you choose an amount that if invested conservatively would provide a continual income for as long as it is needed.

As an example, let’s assume that you contribute $50,000.00 per year in income or services to your household. If you were to die, let us further assume it would take approximately $50,000.00 per year to compensate for the financial hardship your loss creates. Deciding on the correct amount of coverage for that situation would require you deciding how many years after your death your lost contribution would need to continue.

If we assume that the financial hardship created by your loss would only last 10 years after your death, then you would multiply $50,000.00 by 10 to arrive $500,000.00 as an adequate death benefit. In a situation where the financial hardship would last for the life of the beneficiary, a death benefit amount should be selected that if invested at a conservative rate of interest would yield a yearly return of $50,000.00. For example, a $500,000.00 death benefit invested at 10% would yield $50,000.00 per year.

“There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?” — Woody Allen

I don’t know about you, but I have spent an evening with a life insurance salesman, and I have to agree with Woody. The salesman pitched me a bewildering number of choices to part me from my hard earned money, and talked and talked. That was several years before I became a life insurance agent and learned the tricks of the trade, before I knew the strategy of only buying the least expensive term life insurance policy from a company rated “A” or better.

There are numerous variations of life insurance policies, but they all fall into two basic categories: term life insurance and cash value life insurance. Cash value life insurance comes in several flavors: whole life, universal life, variable life, and variable universal life.

While cash value policies can be used to achieve multiple goals in your financial plan, the problem is that they don’t do it well. And one could achieve similar goals more effectively and profitably with better investments. That’s because cash value life insurance is not a good investment vehicle, and it should never be considered as an investment. For that reason, the best value is a term life policy. It’s pure protection at a reasonable price.

Choosing a term life insurance policy is simple. Once you decide on the death benefit amount that you need, and the length of time that you want coverage, choose the policy with the lowest premium from a company that is rated “A” or better. The ratings are given by insurance-rating companies, and are meant to give you some idea of the financial soundness of the insurance company you are considering. A rating of “A” or better is an indication that the insurance company is financially strong.

Finding motor vehicle liability insurance at competitive rates is not easy task these days. Working with one agent usually leaves you limited choices, and even working with a company that gives you the rates of their competitors does not mean you are going to see all the best rates. The best approach to find the lowest rates is to work with a company that searches every auto insurance carrier’s rates and provides you with the lowest premiums to choose from.  CarInsuranceRates.ME is one company doing just that.

CarInsuranceRates.ME offers car insurance quotes for all types of drivers. Even if you are a new driver, student driver, or have a less than stellar driving history, CarInsuranceRates.ME may be able to help you find the lowest premiums available from top rated insurance companies. Getting an auto insurance quote has never been easier. Just answer a few simple questions and press a button to find out how affordable you policy can be.

In a previous blog post, Using Multiple Agents To Get The Best Rate, I discussed the benefits to getting a number of quotes from different companies. In this post, I want to tell you how you can use the same strategy to find the lowest car insurance rates, and how you can do it by using just one website: www.carinsurancerates.me.

Of course, I am assuming that you are looking for car insurance rate quotes from top rated auto insurance companies like GEICO, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, State Farm and Progressive. If so, then www.carinsurancerates.me will allow you compare these top insurance providers and find the lowest rate for you auto insurance policy.

Not only can you compare motor vehicle liability insurance at competitive rates, but the www.carinsurancerates.me website also has informative sections where you can learn about auto insurance basics and how different vehicle types may impact your auto insurance premiums. Additionally, the website has a helpful glossary of insurance terms.

So if you want to use the proven money-saving strategy of getting multiple quotes without having to find multiple agents representing individual insurance companies, www.carinsurancerates.me is a website you should definitely check out.

Arizona residents, or those who planning to become Arizona residents, should check out the web page healthcareinsurance.com for Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance. If you are looking for quality health insurance coverage, Blue Cross Blue Shield has affordable plans and offers free quotes.

Founded in 1939, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona is a non-prpfit health insurance company with more than 1,500 dedicated employees throughout its Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe and Flagstaff offices. It is a leading provider of health insurance plans to more than 1 million Arizonans. They have a variety of health insurance plans for individuals, families, and businesses. They also offer Medicare supplement plans to individuals over age 65.

For a direct link to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, visit healthcareinsurance.com, your starting point for quality, affordable health insurance coverage.

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I am an advocate of shopping around to get the best insurance benefits for the lowest rates. That’s why I was delighted to find a web page dedicated to finding low cost health insurance for California residents. Instead of quoting you just one health insurance company’s rates, this insurance quote provider gives you a selection of California health insurance quotes from several of the top-rated California health insurance providers so you can shop for the best prices.

And if you are looking for domestic partner health insurance in California, this quote service can help you with that, too. Apparently, if you are in good health, you should be able to find a health care insurance provider that will allow you to add your domestic partner to your policy. This is true for same gender and opposite gender partners. So check out this web page for private medical insurance quotes.

I was looking for websites that specialize in senior life insurance and came across ProFam.com. I was impressed with their website’s simple, clean design, and their focus on life insurance for seniors. They claim to specialize in getting insurance for those who are hard to insure, which implies to me that they have experience with what is known in the life insurance business as “impaired risk”–people with health problems.

Using the website was easy. They provide visitors to their website the opportunity to request quotes through a easy to use form, and they also have a toll-free phone number for an instant quote. Those looking for rates on life insurance for seniors should be impressed with their experience on the ProFam.com website.

Having five children, I can tell you that I am always on the look out to save money. And since one of the biggest expenses for families these days is medical and dental insurance, I was naturally interested to learn about a money-saving alternative. It’s called Ameriplan^®. Here’s how it works:

Unlike insurance plans, with expensive premiums and massive red tape, Ameriplan^® provides affordable consumer driven health and discount dental plans starting for as little as $19.95 per month. To gain access to the 1.4 million Ameriplan^® members, doctors, specialists, dentists, orthodontists, vision providers, pharmacists, and chiropractors agree to discount their services for plan members.

I investigated their program to see what type of savings I could expect. The fee schedules are based on zip code, so I entered my zip code for their dental plan. I was impressed, to say the least. I can save from 56-80% on dental services I am likely to use, like oral exams, X-rays, fillings, and teeth cleanings. The savings on braces just blew me away; should my kids need braces, instead of paying the regular $4,500.00, I would only need to pay $2,000.00.

If you are looking for an alternative to health and dental insurance, Ameriplan^® is a program you should look into. Start by going to their website and researching the fees for your area.

“The circumstances of the world are so variable, that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.” — William Henry Seward

Change happens. Children are born. Investments grow. People get older, and hopefully wealthier. The list of potential lifestyle-altering changes that can occur for any person or family is virtually endless. As you must adapt to the changes in your life, so must your life insurance plan adapt to those changes.

By reviewing your life insurance plan every three to five years, or as needed, you can redesign your plan to suit your current situation. Doing that could potentially save you money and heartache in the long run. If you become more financially independent as you get older, or if your financial responsibilities to others diminish, you can lower or eliminate your life insurance coverage and use the saved premium payments for investing or enjoying life. If you are not financially independent yet, and your financial responsibilities increase, you may need to increase your life insurance coverage so that you don’t leave those you care about with a financial hardship after your death.