Archive for March, 2008
Last year it was all the students and teachers killed on the Virginia Tech campus. Before that, Columbine High in Denver. What about 9/11? Things like that are just so hard to fathom.
Who among us hasn’t received an email or a phone call telling us how a common friend and in some cases, whole families, have been taken in car accidents. There was a family from Denver
not too long ago who were involved in a multiple vehicle accident in a Wyoming snowstorm and out of the four, one daughter survived. A high school age girl who suddenly had no one.
And you see it so often in the news. A father in a family dies and donations are being taken to help those left behind because there wasn’t any life insurance. So often these things happen to young families who were living paycheck to paycheck anyway, and now there is no paycheck. If only someone in the family had taught them about the wisdom of life insurance and especially when a person is young, just how inexpensive it is. If only a parent or grandparent had offered to pay for it for a few years just to get them started.
Bottom line. A life lost too soon. That pain will start to fade only to be replaced by new pain. The struggle of a single parent left with nothing but bills. Not enough income. No life insurance. Have you talked with your young adult children about what they should do?
March 31st, 2008
You think I get excited about this stuff. You should talk to the people who have been battling the bipolar/life insurance battle for years and getting their rears kicked by insurance companies. They keep getting told that they are bipolar, therefore they are uninsurable. That may be true in some cases, but we’re finding that the right companies looking at the right situations are hitting home run after home run.
Our most recent victory was a woman in her 40’s that had been treated for Bipolar 1 for the last 15+ years. She’s been married during that period and has been raising three children. She had never actually applied for life insurance because she had been told that with bipolar disorder she would not be accepted. We shopped it and got her a standard plus rate, a very good deal.
Because she met all of the criteria for getting insurance with bipolar, but with a twist, I thought this would be a good time to review those criteria. I think it is clear that some people with bipolar disorder, just like some people with diabetes, are a poor risk either because they don’t or can’t control their situation. Insurance companies, none of them, are going to take on bad risks.
So what constitutes a good risk with bipolar? First would be that there has not been any hospitalization for bipolar other than for diagnosis purposes. If there was a period of poor control where you were hospitalized more than once, it needs to be more than 10 years ago.
No suicide attempts ever. Insurance companies are not interested in finding out if there is a second attempt hidden down deep somewhere.
You can’t be on disability for bipolar. If you are disabled by it, it pretty much insinuates that the problem is not well controlled.
You need to have a stable family life. I often include a letter from your spouse or a family member with the application, speaking to the fact that you are stable and function well in family interactions.
You need to have a stable work situation. Not being able to hold a job for more than six months really kind of leans toward unstable. This doesn’t mean you can’t have changed jobs, just that you are functioning in the workforce with as much stability as today’s economy allows. The twist I referred to with the client I started this post with was that she is a stay at home mom. Not part of the job scene, but anyone that doubts that a successful full time mom isn’t glued together very well, hasn’t tried it.
One factor I don’t believe I’ve mentioned before that won’t necessarily mean approval or decline, but can impact the rate, is the number of medications a person is on. For many, one med does the job. For some it may take 3 or 4 or more. Rates may be affected by how many medications it takes to provide control.
Bottom line. Good deals on life insurance are available for many people with bipolar. Not all, but a substantial percentage. Even if you’ve been declined before, if you meet the criteria above, it probably just means you applied with the wrong company. The right company will want your business.
March 29th, 2008
Oh, if only it were as simple as some people think. Determining mortality assumptions for the purposes of life insurance rates is, well, really, really complicated stuff. I was kicking around Google and came across an article with enough information to choke a horse on why us people die.
Fortunately life insurance underwriters don’t have to go through all of these mental gymnastics each time they review a file. 99% of the general mortality information is already built into assumptions and all they have to do is add or subtract mortality based on your individual health issues or strong points.
Bottom line. I’ve already dismissed 98% of life insurance companies as unworthy of my client’s business. Those are the companies that get your application, pull out a book, and deal you a text book blow to your rates. The other 2% seem to have hit on the fact that while the text book is generally, fairly accurate, it isn’t a one size fits all world.
March 27th, 2008
Hard to believe it’s been 15 months since my dad was diagnosed with a stage 3, grade 4 bladder cancer. When it breached the wall of his bladder and dispersed to other areas of his body, well, the medical prognosis just wasn’t that good.
When, at age 85, even though he is a physically active and strong guy, he wasn’t able to continue chemo treatments because of how compromising it was to his immune system, the prognosis, medically speaking was going down hill. What the doctors didn’t know was that my dad is a serious believer in God and had so many people praying for him, that they could have just not bothered with prognosisizing (I know that’s not a word).
Last time they checked, some of the cancer was gone and the rest of it seemed stalled in it’s tracks. My dad is feeling great and still getting out for daily walks and snow shoveling. He even hung out with the Easter bunny last week (picture above). Praise God!!!!
Bottom line. Don’t forget to include prayer to a Lord who loves you in your cancer therapy plan. The ultimate life insurance plan.
March 26th, 2008
Probably one of the most common misconceptions about life insurance and the application process has to do with how a decline from one company will impact another application. Clients often worry about the fact that virtually all life insurance applications ask whether you have been rated or declined for insurance before.
It helps to understand that all life insurance companies, whether you answer the question yes, or if they note negative health information from the MIB, medical information bureau, still underwrite each application on its’ own merits. That is precisely why I never take a decline by one company as the final word. The truth is that one company’s decline very often turns into another company’s approval, often at very good rates.
It doesn’t seem like that ought to happen, but each company sets their own guidelines which are generally in line with a company marketing and risk philosophy. Some companies just stick to the letter of the law as laid down by reinsurance companies. Other companies set their own boundaries based on their capacity for risk retention.
Bottom line. Again and again I say, “don’t take a decline as the final answer”. For many of my clients it’s just a place to start.
March 26th, 2008
I’ve talked to so many people that assume they are all set because their job offers a cheap group life insurance plan. I’ll be the first to say that if it’s inexpensive I think you ought to take advantage of it. What is a concern to me and should be to you, is putting all of your eggs in that basket. There are some serious downsides to that approach.
That cheap life insurance is great unless there is an EVENT!!!!! No, I’m not talking about your death. Group insurance will pay like any other life insurance if you die. The events I’m talking about are things you see going on all the time such as 1. A change in your benefit package or 2. You quit or get fired (or downsized) or 3. You retire.
You will be told by the plan administrator not to worry because you can convert your group policy to a personal policy. What they won’t tell you while you still have time to plan is how outrageously expensive that converted policy will be. It is going to go from some barely noticeable deduction from your paycheck to a substantial bill every month. You won’t like what is offered. I guarantee it!
So what to do about it? Always carry some amount of life insurance outside the workplace. Term insurance is inexpensive and guess what? If any of those events take place, your personal term insurance policy will remain just the same. Safe, sane, affordable and guaranteed.
Bottom line. No matter what you are offered at work and no matter how good the deal seems, do the prudent thing and contact your independent life insurance agent and get a personal life insurance policy. You will be so glad you have it because, while those EVENTS used to be rare when folks worked the same job for 40 years, they are more the norm than the exception now.
March 26th, 2008
Life insurance shouldn’t be a luxury. Something that you can buy when times are good and can be dropped when things get tight. The need for life insurance, if anything, is more essential during bad economic times.
Not that there is a good time to leave a family without income that is important to maintaining the family’s lifestyle, but bad economic times make an untimely death even worse.
The options for replacing income without life insurance are:
1. Those left behind have to get a job, or a second job. In case no one has noticed, during our current financial downturn jobs are not overly abundant.
2. Tapping into sources of equity such as selling real estate or tapping into stocks or retirement accounts. Again, in our current situation I think it’s pretty plain that selling real estate is tough and takes a long time. This would probably not be the best time for tapping into investments either with just about everything worth a little less than it was a year ago.
3. Welfare.
That’s why life insurance has to be budgeted and affordable. Too many people go for the gusto and buy whatever they can afford at the moment, not giving a lot of thought to what those payments might mean down the road. Keeping your family together and financially secure is a priority that shouldn’t be bulked in with the luxury budget.
So, know what you can afford to budget and keep in force even when the bottom drops out of things. Don’t buy whole life! The rate of whole life policies lapsing during tight times is high because the premiums are high. While you’ll be told you can borrow from the cash value to make the premium payments, be careful with that one. Tapping cash value is the number one cause of whole life and universal life policies crashing and burning.
Buy term insurance and if the only thing that is budgetable is 10 year term, buy that with a goal of working toward getting the term length you might really need. Remember. Affordable insurance first. Investing second and separate.
Bottom line. This whole economic bust has to teach us some lessons. People mortgaged to the max never considering what could happen if things went sour. Now families are losing the roof over their heads at an alarming rate. It may not be easy, but make your family’s security first and foremost.
March 25th, 2008
For all of you that have applied for life insurance and smoke cigars, and didn’t use the right company and agent, you’ve felt the sting of smoker rates. In general, cigarette smokers will spend 2-3 times what a non smoker will spend on life insurance given everything else being equal.
I’ll try not to get on my soapbox too much about how it should be obvious why that’s the case with cigarette smoking. With links to just about every malady known to mankind, an insurance company would be crazy not to figure that into their mortality assumptions and rates. The best you can do as a smoker is to find an independent agent that has access to the best rates available. Right now, in most cases, that would be with Liberty Life and Western Reserve Life.
If you happen use tobacco in some other form such as cigars or chew, and run into an agent that doesn’t know any better, they will probably just quote whatever smoker rate they can find and hope you buy it because, well….because you’re a tobacco user and that means more premium and more commission.
A good indpendent agent on the other hand is going to know that with Prudential you can get non smoker, non tobacco user rates even if you smoke cigars or chew all day long and test positive for nicotine on your exam.
Bottom line. Cutting your rates in half by finding an agent who knows where to take your business and where not to makes sense somehow……unless you want to spend too much money.
March 24th, 2008
We have talked a lot about and frankly I am excited about the results we are getting for clients with bipolar disorder with their applications for life insurance. Where the need seems to be the greatest is among professionals and business people who need substantial amounts of life insurance and, until we were able to come through, weren’t able to find companies interested in participating in higher amounts.
Their (the company’s) problem was conservative, by the book, underwriting and a lack of interest in educating themselves concerning the disorder. You don’t have to dig too far to find that a large percentage of those with bipolar are leading very normal lives with very normal mortality experience. They just happen to take medication to keep it that way. The same could be said for people with well controlled high blood pressure or diabetes.
Many of the “great minds and talents” have been linked to bipolar. In an ABC article
they offer one potential explanation, that the manic traits channeled correctly are often displayed as high energy charisma and creativity.
Just like with artists and actors, some of the most successful people in business have well controlled bipolar disorder. They follow their treatment regimen and are able to lead relatively normal and yes, ultimately affordable, insurable lives.
Bottom line. If you’ve been turned down for life insurance due to bipolar, seek out an independent agent that knows the disorder, knows what to ask and most importantly knows what companies to go to and what companies to avoid.
March 21st, 2008
Medical mistakes kill and disfigure close to 100,000 people in this country every year. That’s why, no surprise, life insurance underwriters will almost always postpone approval on a policy until after any scheduled procedure.
I remember finding it amusing when I had a broken leg operated on that they actually marked the leg prior to surgery to make sure they had the right one. You could have asked a two year old which one had an booboo and they wouldn’t have hesitated.
But thank God they marked my leg. I could have been a victim of the truly bizarre. I know these doctors and nurses are busy folks, but there just really is no excuse for mixing one patient up with another. The article said the lady was considering suing. CONSIDERING?
Medical mistakes and hospital infections are the horror story of the medical world. Again, using me as an example, my leg was pieced back together in a November operation. In March I was hospitalized for a staph infection that was introduced during that same operation. After two months of IV antibiotics I was finally able to kick it.
Bottom line. If you are postponed for life insurance due to an upcoming procedure, try understand where the company is coming from. They aren’t looking for excuses not to take your money, but a tragedy that happened close to home here really drives the point home.
March 20th, 2008
Previous Posts
