Oshkosh is wall to wall private pilots this week. It’s a week long fest of vintage planes, shows, and even the much anticipated Martin Jetpack kicking things off with it’s first public flight.
Life insurance will be well represented I’m sure, but before you buy into the best rates coming from those agencies, bring their information home, shop and compare. Just because you are a private pilot doesn’t mean that an agency that specializes in pilots can necessarily find you the best deal. It’s important to remember that your life insurance risk isn’t just measured by one thing, but by a combination of health, family history, hobbies and even foreign travel.
The Pilot Insurance Center is generally well represented in Oshkosh, and to their credit they’ve done a fine job for a thousands of pilots over the years. But even PIC isn’t always the source for the best rates available. A second opinion could put money back in your fuel jar.
Bottom line. Enjoy the show and when you get home do some prudent shopping.
July 29th, 2008
Skin cancer is the most common cancer among both men and women in the US. Life insurance underwriters have shown a lot of movement on their underwriting guidelines for skin cancer over the past several years. Unfortunately, until recently, it didn’t seem to be in any clear direction.
Probably the best news has been in the risk evaluation of low stage melanoma. Melanoma is the least common skin cancer but accounts for 75% of skin cancer deaths. But, what we’ve seen recently especially in stage 1 and 2 melanoma , is a tendency to get back to standard rates quicker after surgical removal of the cancer. While higher stages may incur a flat extra for a longer period, lower stages can generally be seen within a year with no recurrence.
The other significant shift in skin cancer underwriting has come in basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. In the past these two generally flew under the underwriting radar because of the relatively low mortality risk. A few years ago a study indicated people with multiple basal cell carcinomas were at increased risk of acquiring melanoma. This led to an underwriting swing away from ignoring basal cell to offering no better than standard for people with multiple instances. This stance has also softened somewhat with further studies showing the connection to be more vague than first thought.
Bottom line. Once again, this is not an area where your car insurance agent is going to shine, and I wouldn’t depend on large internet agencies to really dig in deep and get the job done as it should be. A knowledgeable independent agent should be able to ferret out the best opportunities for low rates with your particular history of skin cancer.
July 29th, 2008
The argument of term versus permanent insurance has raged on since before I first got into the business in 1978. Back then the defining lines between the two were more stark, with the only term product available being a yearly renewable term, a product with a low initial cost that went up every year until it was no longer cost effective.
Today the yearly renewable term policy is largely ignored with the advent of longer term guarantees ranging from 10 to 30 years. The reality is that with the introduction of the universal life with a no lapse guarantee, a cashless UL, term insurance to age 100 is now available, just under another name. At the risk of pointing out that Americans are not at the cutting edge of everything, term to age 100 has been available for some time outside of the US.
So the question of whether term insurance is just a cheap way out for those that want life insurance but don’t want to pay whole life prices, rises to the surface. There’s no doubt the term insurance is less expensive, but the crucial question for both the insured and the agent has to be whether term insurance meets the need.
I’ve maintained, since longer terms became available, that term insurance isn’t just a viable alternative to whole life, but in almost all cases it is the more appropriate product. First let’s dispel with the whole life argument that a policy building cash value is a good thing. I had one whole life agent point out to me that without the cash from his whole life policies, Walt Disney would have never been able to get Disneyland off the ground. Well that was then and term life insurance wasn’t available.
I suspect that Walt Disney today would think long and hard about the lower payments he could make on term insurance and the fact that those lower payments would free up immediate cash versus waiting for his policies to build cash value.
Almost all life insurance needs are temporary whether the whole life companies want to admit that or not. Dependent children, in almost all cases, are only dependent until they reach adulthood. Banks don’t make loans for life, but rather for certain periods. Retirement and the need to replace income don’t last until age 100, but rather come to an end generally in our 60’s and 70’s. Even with retirement age increasing due to economic forces, term insurance guaranteed into your 80’s is available.
Bottom line. Term insurance is not just a cheap way out. It’s the smart choice in almost all cases. On the flip side, I would argue that whole life insurance is the wrong choice in virtually all personal insurance portfolios.
July 29th, 2008
