You’ve finally decided to buy life insurance. You know that you want a little extra money available to help take care of your burial expenses, help your family adjust to the loss of your income, or take care of your children’s education expenses. You may also have other considerations, such as leaving money for your heirs, maintaining a business, or giving to charity. However, even if you know what you want to do with the money, it can still be hard to know what to buy, or how much you should pay.
Start by thinking about how much money you’ll need. Consider how much outstanding debt you have, how much your family will need to adjust after you’re gone, what your funeral will cost, and the cost of any other things you’d like to do. If you find that you can’t afford the life insurance policy that you’d like, prioritize what you want. You definitely need enough money to pay off your debts and funeral expenses, but what’s most important to you after that? Is it replacing your income? Sending your children to college? The answers will vary from person to person, and it’s important to think about it carefully. Try to balance everything as best you can, but be determined to at least have some insurance, no matter how little. Although I can be daunting to figure out what you need, it will be worse for your family if you have no life insurance at all!
Also consider which type of life insurance you’ll need: term, whole, or universal life. Term only lasts for a specified amount of time – usually 10 to 30 years. You can choose the term, and the amount of coverage, but remember: the longer the term, the higher the price; the higher the value, the higher the price. Term life covers you if you pass away during the term of the policy. However, if you do not, no insurance will be paid out and there’s no accumulated cash value. Although this sounds like a bad deal, term tends to be the cheapest form of insurance and is a good option for those who cannot afford whole life.
Whole life, on the other hand, is designed to cover a person until they die, as long as the policy is still viable; that is, as long as you pay the premiums in full and on time. With whole life you can also often pay it up through a certain period, such as ten years. Because this type of policy will inevitably pay out, it’s not as good a risk for the insurance company and will cost a little more than term life, but will never expire, making it worth the extra cost if you can afford it.
Universal is also an option that will never expire. However, it is also much more complex than whole life, with different accounts inside the overall universal life policy and different cash values in each of these accounts. Because of the different accounts and because the IRS is very favorable toward life insurance, many people find that universal life insurance is a good way to combine life insurance and savings: once the policy has built up enough cash value, you’re able to withdraw from it. However, universal life insurance is very complex and would take another entire article to explain adequately.
I recommend that families who have a lot of expenses balance their life insurance by purchasing larger amounts of term life insurance, and a smaller amount of whole life insurance that they can pay up. By doing so, they will still have some whole life insurance after the term life insurance expires.
