June 24th, 2010
When considering life insurance, youre planning and preparing for an event most of us would rather not think about. But life insurance represents a critical step in managing your personal finances and ensuring your familys well-being.
The Two Approaches to Life Insurance
You can use one of two approaches to estimate how much life insurance you should buy: the needs approach or the replacement-income approach. Using the needs approach, you calculate the amount of life insurance necessary to cover your familys financial needs if you die. Using the replacement-income approach, you calculate the amount of life insurance you need to equal the income your family will lose. Lets look briefly at each approach.
You need how much?
Using the needs approach, you add up the amounts that represent all the needs your family will have after your death, including funeral and burial costs, uninsured medical expenses, and estate taxes. However, your family depends on you to pay for other needs, such as your childs college tuition, business or personal debts, and food and housing expenses over time.
The needs approach is somewhat limiting. The task of identifying and tallying family needs is difficult, and separating the true needs of your family from what you want for them is often impossible.
Replacing Income
Using the replacement-income approach for estimating life insurance requirements, you calculate the life insurance proceeds that would replace your earnings over a specified number of years after your death.
Life insurance companies sometimes approximate your replacement income at four or five times your annual income. A more precise estimation considers the actual amount your family members need annually, the number of years for which they will need this amount, and the interest rate your family will earn on the life insurance proceeds, as well as inflation over the years during which your family draws on the life insurance proceeds.
Note: Do remember as you quantify the income you want to replace that Social Security provides generous survivors benefits if youve qualified. These benefits can easily total 2,000 a month or more.
Calculating Replacement-Income Amounts with Excel
If youve got access to a computer running Microsoft Excel, the popular spreadsheet program, you can use your computer to calculate the amount of insurance you need to replace a specified number of years of income. Suppose, for example, that you want to buy enough life insurance to replace the income from a 50,000-a-year job for 15 years. If you figure your family will earn 5% on the life insurance proceeds should the worst case scenario occur, you enter the following formula into a cell in an Excel workbook to calculate the replacement income life insurance amount:
=-PV(5%,15,50000)
Excel returns the formula result 518,982.90 indicating that you would need roughly 520,000 of life insurance, invested at 5%, to payout 50,000 a year for 15 years.
Two Calculation Tips
If you want to factor in inflation because youre trying to replace income over a long period of time, you should use a real rate of return rather a regular, or nominal, rate of return.
To calculate a real rate of return, subtract the inflation rate from the interest rate in the formula. For example, if you expect 2% inflation, you could replace the formula shown earlier with this formula:
=-PV(5%-2%,15,50000)
Heres a final calculation tip: You probably want to round up your number. For example, if the formula provided earlier returns the value 518982.90, you might want to round up this value to 600,000. Or 750,000.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
June 17th, 2010
Not everyone needs life insurance. The first thing to do is make sure you need it. Life insurance is really meant for your family members or other dependents who rely on your earnings.
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
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.
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 SEPIRA, 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.)
Categories: Life Insurance UK
June 10th, 2010
Whole life insurance, also known as cash-value insurance is a basic and consistent type of permanent life insurance which remains in effect your entire life at a level premium. This life insurance is a good choice got you if you do not expect your life insurance needs to diminish over time. A portion of your premium goes into a reserve fund called cash value that builds up over the years your policy is in affect. Your reserve fund is tax-deferred and you can borrow against it, until you withdraw it.
The premiums must generally remain constant over the life of the policy and must be paid periodically according to the amount indicated in the policy. You may also have the option of a single premium — paying all of the premiums at once with a single lump sum. Your cash values will grow to equal the amount of the death benefit when you turn to age 100.
Although, whole life insurance is very expensive, and if you’re on a limited budget, you may not be able to afford all the insurance coverage you actually need. But the plus point is that the death
benefit is guaranteed as long as premiums are met. Also death benefit will never decrease if you don’t borrow against it.
Whole life insurance policy’s returns will fluctuate with the markets and will usually follow returns
available from other investments like equity mutual funds. However, if you decide to quit your policy, your cash value can be paid in cash or paid-up insurance.
Whole life insurance is most suitable for you, if you want to:
use it as a tax and estate planning vehicle,
accumulate cash value for a child’s education or retirement,
pay final expenses,
provide money for a favorite charity,
fund a business buysell agreement,
provide key person protection.
Before buying the whole life insurance, you need to think carefully about choosing your level of
coverage. Too often people make the mistake of insufficiently covering or even worse, financially
overextending themselves. This would be a tragic error with whole life insurance policy because
defaulting on premium payments can mean policy cancellation and the loss of your entire investment. So be careful and make sure you:
pick a life insurance policy that has a guaranteed cash value starting at the very first year,
choose the one with the highest cash value in the very first year,
consider “participating” insurance policies which can pay dividends, increasing your policy’s value by boosting both the total cash value and the death benefits,
beware of any insurance policy that levies “surrender charges” when you cancel.
if you ever need to stop paying premiums, your policy lets you use the accumulated cash value of the life insurance policy to pay the premiums, thus keeping your coverage current.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
June 3rd, 2010
Most people are aware of how life insurance works and what are the events and dangers that it is designed to protect against. They may also have family commitments and people who they provide for and know that some sort of life insurance would protect their family financially, if something were to happen to them. However, it is still often a very difficult decision to make if you are trying to decide whether or not you need life insurance.
Life insurance is a big commitment financially speaking. The premium can vary in cost but can be considerable, then there is also the issue that life insurance often extends over many years, even decades. This means that not only are you committing to pay the premium for this year, but also for many years into the future. There are not many people who can say with certainty what their earnings will be in ten or fifteen or twenty years time.
There are also early termination penalties, which means if you want to end the policy before the expiration of the entire term, you will be financially penalised. This is generally more relevant for life assurance but can also apply to life insurance if your rate has been calculated on the condition that you remain insured for so many years into the future.
If you have life assurance, then it will also be a method of saving for the future. This is a very popular concept, especially these days with the growing concern about the state of pension funds, but it again deserves careful consideration. There are many ways to save for the future, and by deciding to do so by way of a life assurance policy still entails deciding that life insurance is something that you want and are willing to pay for. If you do not need life insurance, then there are probably more efficient ways of saving for retirement than with life assurance, which places a proportion of your savings against the insurance aspect of the policy.
In general, most people will really only be considering life insurance if they have a family to support. This can be a spouse and generally children. However, situations frequently change, people get divorced, and children always grow up and become independent. If your family situation is likely to change, you should familiarise yourself with the ways you can end the policy early and what penalties would apply. However, if you have a young family and are concerned about their financial security for the future, then life insurance will be a great opportunity for you to provide for these concerns.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
May 27th, 2010
Making the decision to buy life insurance can have a lasting effect. Without a life insurance policy your family could suffer great financial hardship when you die. Life insurance is a way to ensure that you can still take care of your family after you are gone. Knowing what considerations you should make when choosing a life insurance policy can help make the process easier.
Determining the amount of life insurance really depends on your personal situation. Consider what would happen to your family without your income. If it would cause financial problems then you should take that into account when choosing the amount of our policy. You should also consider factors like health insurance that could increase the needed income.
The cost of life insurance policies also varies depending on many factors. Company life insurance policies are usually always going to be the cheapest. Most often, though, you are only covered for the period of time you work for the employer. Also you usually have to be with an employer for a certain amount of time before you are eligible to receive life insurance benefits. Private life insurance polices can range in costs depending on the agents fees, types of coverage and limits. Other factors that effect costs are high risk factors, like someone who smokes, is overweight or has a preexisting medical condition.
The best way to choose a life insurance policy is to consider all the factors and take time to compare different policies. This is an important decision and should not be rushed. Discuss the policy with you spouse to ensure you have covered everything and havent forgot any important details. Once you have chosen a policy be sure to review it often, especially after any significant life change. The importance of life insurance is often underestimated until the need for it arises, so planning ahead and purchasing a policy will ensure a stable future for your family.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
May 20th, 2010
Compare Term Life Insurance – The Only Way To Save Money
Term life insurance shopping is easier than shopping for the equity based permanent plans. It is much easier to compare term life insurance because it is the simplest form of all life insurance policies. Term life insurance consists of a few things that make your shopping relatively easy. Term life insurance means that there is a definite term or period of time that you are insured. The insurance coverage will cease at the end of the term period. The first thing that you must choose is the time period that you need the coverage. A home mortgage policy is the best and easiest example. It is usually a decreasing term policy that declines at approximately the same rate as the home mortgage. It is the perfect policy to protect your home. The amount of insurance and the time period is already in place and that enables you to have a well defined quote comparison.
There are some things to consider when comparing term to term. Most of your insurance carriers will be stock companies. They are owned and operated by the stockholders. Their policies have no dividends. Mutual Insurance companies are technically owned by the policyholders and so a dividend is often returned back to the insured. It is better to compare stock companies with stock companies and mutual companies with mutual companies when shopping for term life insurance.
The online shopper has a great advantage when comparing term life insurance. It makes it so much easier when they are looking for term Life insurance. The permanent plans have so many variables and options as compared to term life insurance. Make sure that you compare the same face amounts with the same time periods. Term policies are sometimes sold in bands. That means that the rates for higher face amounts may decline per thousand pounds of coverage. You can be aggressive when you know the amount of coverage you need and the length of time you need it. Determine those two needs and then shop until you drop.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
May 13th, 2010
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Categories: Life Insurance UK
May 6th, 2010
Many people wonder why they should invest in life insurance. The fact is when you pass away and do not have coverage or money; your loved ones must take the burden of paying funeral costs, arranging, and so on. The cost of funerals is costly, so this is unfair to your loved ones. Life insurance will cover you, and will offer some stress relief in the event you die on funeral costs.
Moreover, if you pass on, your family will have to pay your mortgage, car payments and so on. Do not let this happen. Some life insurance policies will offer you unemployment coverage, burial, mortgage coverage and so on.
Life insurance plans will protect you and your family. You can find affordable plans online so there is no reason not to seek coverage. Some life insurance plans will cover debts you owe, expenses and so on. You will find life insurance plans that will cover all your estate costs too.
Life insurance often includes the cash value plans and the term life policies. Cash value will provide you coverage for the course of your life. In short, this is the permanent plan whereas term life is a plan that when it expires you must renew the policy. Obviously, the cash value is the better choice.
Cash value life will offer you benefits that will cover you in the event you pass. You have asset value that attaches to this plan. In other words, you have lifetime coverage at some of the best rates on insurance. In short, this plan will protect your financial interest. You have options to with some term life insurance. Some plans will allow you to request a conversion to change your plan to a cash value plan. Some term life plans will not give you this option.
You have other options with life insurance plans, but the cash value is obviously one of the better choices. Still, you can go online to use quote system at the insurance sites to find great rates, comparable costs, and several types of insurance plans.
If you are an employer, looking for group insurance coverage you will find a wide assortment of policies online also. Cobra, term life (group option) and other plans are available. Use the quote system to find the best rates on group life insurance. Check the packages offered, since some insurance plans give you better rates and benefits than other plans will.
Life insurance is important. To make your family’s life easier, go online and search through the different plans to find what works best for you. Get the protection you and your family both deserve.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
April 29th, 2010
Take your time in taking decisions, chalk out which one is best suited for you and your family from the policies made available by different insurance companies. Look into your age, condition of health, income, health habits, marital status, number of children and lifestyle.
You must always keep in mind that if you dont need it, avoid it. No need to insure. Ask yourself how much your family is depending on your salary. If your family cant do without your earning, you really need life insurance, otherwise no need to worry. It is difficult to say for how much money should you insure. Yes, it depends on your familys lifestyle and debts. Generally, people keep it at between five and ten times of your annual salary.
It is recommended that if you’re under 40 and don’t have a family history of life threatening illness, try Term Insurance. It offers death benefit but no cash value. Otherwise, always go for the Whole Life Insurance, as it offers both death benefit and cash value. However, it is much more expensive than the former. As Term Insurance safeguards the policyholder only for a specified time period, it is appropriate for military and young families. It is cheaper than other policy types, but it has no savings feature.
It is also necessary to calculate your total insurance needs by examining the needs at various stages of your surviving family, and purchase insurance to cover the gaps. Dont forget to review your life insurance plan periodically. You need to be alert when your financial responsibilities undergo a significant change. Be open to talk about the insurance plan with your spouse and let heshe understand the gaps the current insurance are going to fill.
Some points are also needed to keep in mind while buying insurance. Make your check payable to the insurance company, but not to the agent. And dont forget to get a receipt. Even if you have purchased a policy, have a think and rethink for around ten days. You can always ask for a cancellation and change for an appropriate one with full refund. In case an agent or company contacts you and wants you to cancel your current policy to buy a new one, always contact the original agent or company before making any decisions. And it is up to you whether you try for an expensive one or the cheaper one. But dont forget to gather maximum information.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
April 22nd, 2010
Making the decision to buy life insurance can have a lasting effect. Without a life insurance policy your family could suffer great financial hardship when you die. Life insurance is a way to ensure that you can still take care of your family after you are gone. Knowing what considerations you should make when choosing a life insurance policy can help make the process easier.
Determining the amount of life insurance really depends on your personal situation. Consider what would happen to your family without your income. If it would cause financial problems then you should take that into account when choosing the amount of our policy. You should also consider factors like health insurance that could increase the needed income.
The cost of life insurance policies also varies depending on many factors. Company life insurance policies are usually always going to be the cheapest. Most often, though, you are only covered for the period of time you work for the employer. Also you usually have to be with an employer for a certain amount of time before you are eligible to receive life insurance benefits. Private life insurance polices can range in costs depending on the agents fees, types of coverage and limits. Other factors that effect costs are high risk factors, like someone who smokes, is overweight or has a preexisting medical condition.
The best way to choose a life insurance policy is to consider all the factors and take time to compare different policies. This is an important decision and should not be rushed. Discuss the policy with you spouse to ensure you have covered everything and havent forgot any important details. Once you have chosen a policy be sure to review it often, especially after any significant life change. The importance of life insurance is often underestimated until the need for it arises, so planning ahead and purchasing a policy will ensure a stable future for your family.
Categories: Life Insurance UK
