Should You Get Life Insurance?

While most people may not realize it, life insurance really is a boon. In the event of your pre-mature death, life insurance provides money to your surviving heirs, thus making financial stability more easier to achieve for them.
Here's a few common questions and their answers:

1. What Life Insurance is?

Basically, a life insurance policy, is an agreement between the insurance company, the insured person, and the beneficiary. The insured, pays a certain pre-defined amount to the insurance company. And in the case of death of the insured, the company pays the benefit to the beneficiary.

2. Types Of Insurance

There are two basic types of Life Insurance. They are term life insurance, and permanent life insurance. Term life, as the name suggests, is a temporary agreement, for a pre-defined number of years, after which, the agreement expires. Various lengths of term life can be purchased, however, the most common ones are between 10 and 20 years. However, terms as long as 30 years, or as short as 1 year are also available.
In the case of Permanent Life, the policy covers the insured till the date of their death, or till the time the agreement 'matures', which in most cases, is at age 100. There are different types of Permanent Insurance, which include whole life, universal life, etc. There are many different reasons for choosing either of these, so professional advice is always recommended.

3. How much will you get?

In most cases, the amount you get, is dependent on the reason you purchase it. And this, in most cases, is to replace the income in the case of death. While most professionals would recommend 10-12 times your annual income, this can vary, and approximately should be good enough to provide for at least 20 years of safe income. However, inflation, final expenses, etc are not considered in this, so, you should always let a professional do the calculation before you decide any amount.

4. Benefits of life insurance

Although, the benefits of life insurance differ from policy to policy, most of the policies have some of the benefits in common. The most effective benefit, is that the death benefit is, in most cases, excluded from any income tax deductions. Thus, a 500,000 dollar policy will transfer the whole 500,000 dollars to the beneficiary, with no deductions whatsoever. This, is also effective for passing wealth from one generation to another.

5. Which company should I go for?

When thinking of drawing up a life insurance policy, always go with companies that are financially strong and established. Try to look for AA or AAA ratings from different services. While most companies have good consultants that have a solid background, and training, you should always look for agents with any or all of the following credentials: LUTCF, ChFC or CLU.

Good Luck!