Life Insurance
- Insuring Life Whole life insurance provides a solution to many of the shortcomings of term life insurance. However, as consumers demanded even more changes from the life insurance industry, insurers responded with yet another development: variable life insurance.
- How Can I Determine the Financial Strength of My Insurance Company? How do you compare one life insurance company with another? What features do you examine? What criteria do you use? How do you know what to look for? These are difficult questions. Even so, making sure your insurance company is financially sound is an important part of ensuring family security.
- Insurance for Family-Run Company Members The majority of owners of family-run businesses envision future generations running their companies. Only 8 percent expect to sell outside the family.
- Insuring After-Death Benefits Most people are familiar with whole life insurance. For many years whole life policies were the predominant type of life insurance sold in America. When you purchase a whole life policy, you traditionally pay a fixed premium for as long as you live, or for as long as you keep the policy in force.
- Insuring Posthumous Benefits Universal life insurance was developed in the late 1970s to overcome some of the disadvantages of term and whole life insurance.
- Insuring Your Policy Reflects Current Living As your standard of living rises or your family grows, the life insurance benefit your loved ones would need in the event of your death may also change. If it has been a while since you last reviewed your family's life insurance needs, now may be a good time to do so.
- Life Insurance and Other Asset-Transfer Vehicles Nine out of 10 U.S. businesses are family owned, but seven out of 10 won’t survive to the next generation. The chief culprit? A majority of business owners don’t have a plan in place to control what will happen when they leave the business. The fact is, all small businesses must face changes in ownership and leadership at some point. How well prepared the business is for that eventuality may very well dictate whether it survives the change.
- Life Insuring Choices The average American household has enough life insurance coverage to replace 35 months of income. Assuming your family is somewhere near the average, consider how much just one major life change could affect that time period. For instance, the cost of raising a child or owning a larger home could dramatically shorten the amount of time a death benefit would last. If you have experienced these or other significant changes recently, take the time to review your life insurance policies.
- Life Settlements Life settlements can provide a means for people to tap into the value of life insurance and similar programs to provide them with the money they need while they are still alive. In a typical life settlement, the buyer would receive the full rights to the proceeds of the life insurance policy purchased, while at the same time agreeing to make all future payments to keep the policy in force.
- Permanent Insuring Choice Common Permanent, or cash-value, life insurance accounts for roughly 80 percent of all individual life insurance policies. This popularity may exist because cash-value insurance offers a wealth of advantages to the living.
- Review of Life Insurance and Other Assets Over the course of a lifetime, assets in an IRA or an employer-sponsored retirement plan can potentially grow to six or seven figures, making up a significant portion of your estate. Did you know that when you die, these assets will go directly to the beneficiary listed on the plan — regardless of instructions in your will? How long has it been since you updated your beneficiary designations? Have you even thought about them since you established the plan? Neglecting to keep retirement plan beneficiaries current could bring about unexpected consequences.
- Temporary Live Insuring Term life insurance is pure insurance. When you purchase a term policy, you are buying coverage for a specific period of time. If you die within the time period specified in your policy, the insurance company will pay your beneficiaries the face value of your policy.
