Archive for March 4th, 2007
Life insurance for women is a topic that sometimes brings primal grunts from men. Somehow they think women have wandered onto hallowed ground if they start valuing themselves in the family so much that they can quantify it with life insurance.
Amazingly enough the majority of women haven’t figured out their own worth and the loss it would create if they were to die prematurely. Some, even know they work and provide income, believe the husband is the “primary” breadwinner and therefore the only one worthy of being insured.
Listen up! The majority are not affluent enough that we would not be hurting if suddenly an income was gone and was replaced by a whole new set of expenses. So let’s break this into four groups and four good reasons for women to consider at least carrying some term insurance and in some cases small amounts of universal life and whole life.
Let’s assume married, two kids and a stay at home mother. The husband carries $1,000,000 of term insurance to make sure the family is taken care of if he dies while the children are still dependent. What if the wife dies? A cost analysis was done last year to determine what it would take to replace a full time stay at home mom. $143,000 a year if you had to hire someone to do everything that they do. Insurance companies will generally allow you to carry up to half of what the husband does as a homemaker. Unless I’m missing something, $500,000 on my wife, my children’s mother, is a prudent thing to do.
Now let me throw a bit of my own feelintgs in this debate. Men, there is nothing better in this world that you could do for your children, especially younger children, than to take a year off and just be there for them to help them deal with the loss. Just my opinion. And life insurance will fund that sabbatical.
The second scenario is that the mother works and her income is integral to the family financial picture. Plus she still does most of the things contained in the $143,000 above. She should carry life insurance comparable to what the husband carries. I just can’t see any valid arguments against that, so enough said.
Third is single mothers. Carry enough term insurance to get your children grown and on their own. A college education would be nice, but keep it affordable. Make sure you have a plan for what happens to your children if you die and then make sure you fund it with life insurance.
Last is single women. Mellody Hopson said on Good Morning America the other morning that single women didn’t need to carry life insurance. Let me suggest to you that when you are young and single may be the most practical time to purchase the insurance for your future. The need may not be there today, but sometimes when you wait for the need to arise, your health or your age can greatly increase the cost of insurance.
March 4th, 2007
Like so many urban legends or wive’s tales, there is the notion going around that many people cannot get life insurance, or at the very best they have to have been cancer free for at least 10 years. Breast cancer survivors have been on the wrong end of this information for a long time.
Obviously stage and grade of the cancer play an important part in underwriting life insurance for breast cancer. The earlier the stage and the lower the grade, the better the chances of getting competitive prices soon.
Find out where you stand in the life insurance picture by visiting with an independent agent. Be armed with a pathology report, details of treatment and the date of the last treatment. Given this information an indepedent agent can shop for the best possible life insurance quotes.
How soon to start after your treatment? Start when the treatment is completed and you have had your first post treatment followup. You may not get what you want right then, but you can assess where you are and your agent can help you understand how to get from that point to where you want to be. You may be pleasantly surprised at how affordable it might be to at least put some insurance inforce, if not then, within a reasonably short period of time.
One piece of advice would be, as soon as you are insurable, buy term insurance to keep the cost down. The farther you get from the breast cancer treatment, the better the rates will be. Then options or open for longer term insurance, universal life or whole life.
March 4th, 2007
Want to throw a wet towel on an adult conversation? Ask your friends how much life insurance they carry on their children. The normal answer would run the gammet from, “why would I do a thing like that” to “that’s not something I want to talk about”.
Just suppose for a moment that juvenile or children’s life insurance isn’t some morbid thought, but a potentially valuable gift to your child. OK, who said “life insurance can’t be a gift to my child because for the life insurance policy to do anything my child has to die and I don’t want to talk about it”?
Let’s just talk about adults for a minute. Hopefully we can all agree that life insurance has value in our adult lives. OK, I think I got about an 80% positive response to that. Now, if you could pay a very small amount of money to ensure, no matter what your young adult child’s health was, that they could get life insurance at affordable rates, would you agree that there might be some value in that? If your child developed some illness during their growing years it could probably be construed as a gift, couldn’t it? A prudent thing to do to make sure they can do the right adult thing at affordable prices?
All right then! Let me tell you how to accomplish that and then I’ll tell you how to answer that awkward question and sound like you are just, well, savvy.
The best policy out there that will guarantee that your child can buy $100,000 or more of insurance when they reach age 23 has a one time cost of just $250. You are purchasing something that gives them a guarantee as much as 23 years down the road that there is no other way for them to have guaranteed. The kicker is that it also includes a small amount of term insurance as they grow up. $5000 through age 13. $10,000 when they reach 13 through age 18 and $15,000 from age 18 to 23. This is no more than final expense or burial insurance. At age 23 they can do a conversion of that policy to a universal life policy of up to $100,000 in coverage WITH NO EVIDENCE OF INSURABILITY. All of that for a one time payment of $250? Yes!!
Now, when your friend asks you how much life insurance you carry on your children, tell them you bought a guaranteed insurability policy so that when your child grows up, they are going to be able to buy insurance no matter what there health is. If they really push on the children’s life insurance question, tell them that the guaranteed insurability policy has a small death benefit rider on it if, God forbid, anything should happen while they are growing up. Tell them you weren’t really interested in children’s insurance, but it just came with the package at no additional cost.
March 4th, 2007
