|
Why You Buy Life Insurance
You buy life insurance so that, if you die, your dependents can live the same kind of life they live now. Strictly speaking, then, life insurance is only a means of replacing your earnings in your absence. If you dont have dependents (say, because youre single) or you dont have earnings (say, because youre retired), you dont need life insurance. Note that children rarely need life insurance because they almost never have dependents and other people dont rely on their earnings.
Life Insurance Comes in Two Flavors
If you do need life insurance, you should know that it comes in two basic flavors: term insurance and cash-value insurance (also called whole life insurance). Ninety-nine times out of 100, what you want is term insurance.
Term Life is Simple to Buy and Understand
How to Choose a Life Insurance Policy Find out how to make an informed choice between the different types of life insurance policies.
If you have a spouse or children, it will give you peace of mind to make sure that they will be safe and secure when you pass away. The best way to do this is to purchase a life insurance policy. There are thousands of different companies offering life insurance. But how do you choose an insurance policy that is right for you?
To help you to make an informed decision when you come to choose a life insurance policy, you need to understand exactly what a life insurance pol ..
Term life insurance is simple, straightforward life insurance. You pay an annual premium, and if you die, a lump sum is paid to your beneficiaries. Term life insurance gets its name because you buy the insurance for a specific term, such as 5, 10, or 15 years (and sometimes longer). At the end of the term, you can renew your policy or get a different one. The big benefits of term insurance are that its cheap and its simple.
Cash Value is Trickier
The other flavor of life insurance is cash-value insurance. Many people are attracted to cash-value insurance because it supposedly lets them keep some of the premiums they pay over the years. After all, the reasoning goes, you pay for life insurance for 20, 30, or 40 years, so you might as well get some of the money back.
With cash-value insurance, some of the premium money is kept in an account that is yours to keep or borrow against. This sounds great. The only problem is that cash-value insurance usually isnt a very good investment, even if you hold the policy for years and years. And its a terrible investment if you keep the policy for only a year or two. Whats more, to really analyze a cash-value insurance policy, you need to perform a very sophisticated financial analysis. And this is, in fact, the major problem with cash-value life insurance.
Whole Life Insurance AdviceIs It Better? If you have decided that whole life insurance is the route you want to take, you need to be well-aware of both its pros and its cons.
Whole life insurance covers you for your entire life, as opposed to term life insurance which only covers you for a certain number of years. However, with that additional coverage comes additional costs. Isnt that the way things always happen? With whole life insurance, not only are you paying for the cost of the insurance, but you are also paying for the cost of investment. Some have referred to the investment costs as forced savings, and, admittedly, there ..
While perhaps a handful of good cash-value insurance policies are available, many perhaps mostare terrible investments. And to tell the good from the bad, you need a computer and the financial skills to perform something called discounted cash-flow analysis. If you do think you need cash-value insurance, it probably makes sense to have a financial planner perform this analysis for you. Obviously, this financial planner should be a different person from the insurance agent selling you the policy.
Whats the bottom line? Cash-value insurance is much too complex a financial product for most people to deal with. Note, too, that any investment option thats tax-deductiblesuch as a 401(k), a 401(b), a deductible IRA, a SEP/IRA, or a Keogh planis always a better investment than the investment portion of a cash-value policy. For these two reasons, I strongly encourage you to simplify your financial affairs and increase your net worth by sticking with tax-deductible investments.
If you do decide to follow my advice and choose a term life insurance policy, be sure that your policy is non-cancelable and renewable. You want a policy that cannot be canceled under any circumstances, including poor health. (You have no way of knowing what your health will be like ten years from now.) And you want to be able to renew the policy even if your health deteriorates. (You dont want to go through a medical review each time a term is up and you need to renew.)
About the Author: Seattle certified public accountant & author Stephen L. Nelson CPA has written more than 150 books. His web site is http://www.stephenlnelson.com" target="_blank"> http://www.stephenlnelson.com
Source: http://www.isnare.com Stephen NelsonA CPA Talks About Buying Life Insurance
|
