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Disability Insurance

Adding Disability Protection — Disability at any age can disrupt income while medical expenses deplete your savings. Unless you have a battle plan, the effects of even a short-term disability can be financially and emotionally devastating.
Insurance If You Become Disabled — It's been called the "living death." A serious illness or injury that results in a disability can pose risks to a family that may be far more detrimental than the premature death of a primary wage earner. Living expenses are virtually guaranteed to increase, and income is likely to fall.
Protect Yourself from Disability Disaster — One way to protect yourself financially in the event of a disability is by purchasing an individual disability income insurance policy. This kind of coverage can be structured to meet a variety of needs. An individual disability policy typically will replace a percentage of pre-disability income if an accident or illness renders the insured unable to work.

Health Insurance

Association Health Plans — AHPs, which allow small businesses to purchase affordable health insurance plans for their employees, may become a reality.
Entrepreneurs Beware — Entrepreneurs and small business owners should take care when dealing with health insurance promoters; many such promoters have been found to be illegitimate and could leave you with large, unpaid medical bills.
Health Insurance Choices — Sheds some light on the differences between HMO and PPO health insurance programs and provides insight into which might be best for you.
Medical Insurance — Analyzes health insurance choices in terms of the different kinds available (basic, major, comprehensive, Medicare) to help you make a more informed decision on the type of coverage you might need.

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 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.
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.
Updating Your Life Insurance Upon Marriage — If you are recently married or remarried, it is important to be sure that your financial affairs are in order, and this includes designating your life insurance beneficiary. Especially in the case of remarriage, forgetting to change your life insurance beneficiary to your new spouse is a very common problem, but it is one that simply cannot be overlooked.

Long Term Care Insurance

Insurance for Extended Care Key — If you were to suffer an illness or disability that required long-term nursing care, would you be covered? Probably not. The vast majority of Americans go through their lives reassuring themselves that it will never happen to them. However, if past trends continue, 43 percent of those aged 65 may spend some time in a nursing home during their lifetimes. Of that 43 percent, the average person may stay in a nursing home for 2.5 years! And 21 percent can expect to stay 5 years or more.
Insurance for Protracted Care — Many Americans are woefully uninformed about the costs and funding sources associated with long-term care. A national survey undertaken on behalf of the AARP recently found that only 15 percent of respondents aged 45 and older could estimate the costs within 20 percent of the national average. Furthermore, more than half of those surveyed mistakenly believe that Medicare will pay for long-term care.
Insuring Against Prolonged Care Costs — Life expectancies are growing longer, and the risk of entering a nursing home after age 65 is now as high as 49 percent. The national average cost for nursing-home care is about $56,000 per year. By 2010, the cost is projected to grow to $90,000.
Long-Term-Treatment Insurance — After a lifetime of accumulating money for a comfortable retirement, it would be a bitter pill to swallow if your plans were dashed because you or your spouse incurred high nursing-care bills. Yet the risk is real. If you believe that paying $148,000 per year for nursing-home care (the estimated cost in 2020) would be difficult or maybe even impossible, consider these options.
Protracted Care Insurance Important — A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that people aged 65 face a 43 percent lifetime risk of entering a nursing home. About 21 percent may stay there five years or longer. According to the AARP, the average cost of this care is $56,000 per year. The odds that you will need some kind of long-term care increase as you age.
Request Long Term Care Insurance Quotes — We make shopping for LTC Insurance simple. Our experienced LTC agent is ready to answer all of your LTC questions. Just fill out our form and our Long Term Care Insurance agent will contact you today!
Risks of Ignoring Potential Extended-Care Costs — Fifty percent of Americans worry that they won't have enough money to pay for long-term care in retirement — yet only 18 percent have seriously considered buying long-term-care (LTC) insurance.

Medicare Insurance

What Medicare Insurance Includes — Medicare is packaged in two parts: Part A and Part B. Part A is hospital insurance protection. It covers hospitalization, some hospice care, and a limited amount of post-hospital skilled nursing and home health care. Part B, which is medical insurance, covers physicians’ services, outpatient hospital care, physical therapy, diagnostic tests, and a variety of other services. At first glance, it appears Uncle Sam has everything covered. Unfortunately, there are many limitations.

Property Insurance

Automobile as Part of Property Insurance — When shopping to insure your automobile, consider road testing at least four types of policy features. This page will familiarize you with the standards of each feature.
Extending Property Insurance — Over the last decade, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in judgments of $1 million or more awarded to plaintiffs against individuals. In this litigious society, no one is immune from potential lawsuits. Fortunately, there is a way to shield yourself. You can supplement both your auto and homeowners policies with excess liability insurance, or an "umbrella policy".
History of Property Insurance — Long ago, we figured out there is strength in numbers. For hundreds of years, people have been joining forces against all kinds of calamities — including financial troubles.
House Insurance — Buying a home is the biggest financial commitment most people will make in their lifetime. It makes sense to protect that investment against unforeseen circumstances and against the wrath of nature. We've all seen the pictures on the news of damage caused by fire, flood, earthquakes, mudslides and other natural disasters. Most homeowners choose to buy a house insurance policy to cover the cost of rebuilding their home should disaster strike. A good homeowner's insurance policy will also cover the possessions in the home against theft and damage.
How Can I Upgrade My Insurance — Tax-Free with an Annuity? — Responding to the changing needs of consumers, the life insurance industry has developed some exciting alternatives. These alternatives go much further in satisfying a variety of financial needs and objectives than traditional types of insurance and annuities.
Increasing Your Property Insurance Coverage — If you’re on a fixed income, chances are you wouldn’t have the time or resources to recover from a personal injury lawsuit of $1 million or more. Yet studies show that juries have become increasingly sympathetic to plaintiffs in personal injury cases, making the chances of facing such a lawsuit all the more real.
Optimizing Life Insurance Coverage — Understanding the threat of estate taxes on your life insurance proceeds is your first step in protecting these funds from unnecessary taxation. The next steps are determining the appropriate ownership of your policy and selecting an appropriate beneficiary. While there are other alternatives, the life insurance trust can help avoid potential threats to the policy’s proceeds.
Postponing Retirement — More than 2 million American households will have to postpone retirement due to recent economic conditions, a 2003 survey found. Nine out of 10 survey respondents (earning at least $75,000 per year) said their portfolios lost value; 73 percent expected that it would take at least three years for their portfolios to return to the levels they saw at the peak of the bull market.
Property Insurance as Claimant — As good a system as insurance is, it isn’t perfect. Masses of people, mountains of paper and myriads of problems must be processed daily and hourly by the best of companies. Everything seems to go smoothly as long as all you have to do is pay your premiums. But when it comes time to file even a small claim, you are treated as an adversary. You can still make the system work. You just have to take a few steps to make your position clear. Don’t be afraid to challenge any denial or unfair settlement.
Property Insurance Importance Increases — "Holding down the fort" used to be a matter of muskets and maybe a guard dog or two. In our modern age, the gun and dog have been replaced by insurance — particularly homeowners insurance. With the increasing need for homeowners insurance, it is startling to consider that 76 percent of Americans are improperly insured, according to a study by Marshall and Swift.