We’re all in a hurry. But the old adage, “haste makes waste” really applies to buying Life Insurance.
For example, many people go to an online service to buy Life Insurance and balk at answering detailed questions about their age, gender, health, family health history and lifestyle. They want a quote now.
So they find a source that only asks a few questions, get some quick quotes, choose a Life Insurance company and sit back expecting everything to be fine.
Several weeks later, however, they often discover that the price they were quoted isn’t the price they’ll have to pay. Remember, quotes are simply estimates. And quotes based on very little information, are frequently wrong.
By spending 15 or minutes with your Life Insurance agent upfront to provide all the information he or she needs to give you an accurate quote, you can save weeks of time and frustration pursuing a price you won’t qualify for.
The pioneer in impartial, accurate quoting for Term Life Insurance —and by far the largest independent sales group— is SelectQuote Insurance Services. SelectQuote has nearly 100 experienced, licensed agents and will match you with your best prices from a wide range of highly rated Term Life Insurance companies. There is no cost or obligation for this service.
SelectQuote has exclusive videos of Suze Orman offering impartial advice on buying Life Insurance.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
How to save money buying Life Insurance
The best way to save money on Life Insurance is to buy Term Life Insurance and shop around.
Term Life Insurance, compared with Permanent Life Insurance, is much cheaper. Most financial advisors recommend it because it offers the greatest protection to your family for the lowest cost.
Shopping around is important because different Life Insurance companies often have different prices for your Life Insurance “fingerprint.” Your “fingerprint” is made up of your age, gender, health, family health history and your lifestyle.
And your price could vary hundreds of dollars a year from one company to another.
The only problem is over 1,000 companies sell Life Insurance. And shopping even a group of them could eat up a lot of time.
Fortunately, there are independent companies that comparison shop for you. To make sure you get the most accurate quotes when talking to an agent:
· Make sure the agent asks detailed questions about your health, family health history,
occupation and hobbies.
· Ask why the agent recommends a certain company to you. What are your other choices?
· Ask what tools the agent used to arrive at your quotes.
The pioneer in impartial “comparison shopping” for Term Life Insurance — service and by far the largest — is SelectQuote Insurance Services. SelectQuote has nearly 100 experienced, licensed agents and will research a wide range of highly rated Term Life Insurance companies for your best rates at no cost or obligation.
SelectQuote has exclusive videos of Suze Orman offering impartial advice on buying Life Insurance.
Term Life Insurance, compared with Permanent Life Insurance, is much cheaper. Most financial advisors recommend it because it offers the greatest protection to your family for the lowest cost.
Shopping around is important because different Life Insurance companies often have different prices for your Life Insurance “fingerprint.” Your “fingerprint” is made up of your age, gender, health, family health history and your lifestyle.
And your price could vary hundreds of dollars a year from one company to another.
The only problem is over 1,000 companies sell Life Insurance. And shopping even a group of them could eat up a lot of time.
Fortunately, there are independent companies that comparison shop for you. To make sure you get the most accurate quotes when talking to an agent:
· Make sure the agent asks detailed questions about your health, family health history,
occupation and hobbies.
· Ask why the agent recommends a certain company to you. What are your other choices?
· Ask what tools the agent used to arrive at your quotes.
The pioneer in impartial “comparison shopping” for Term Life Insurance — service and by far the largest — is SelectQuote Insurance Services. SelectQuote has nearly 100 experienced, licensed agents and will research a wide range of highly rated Term Life Insurance companies for your best rates at no cost or obligation.
SelectQuote has exclusive videos of Suze Orman offering impartial advice on buying Life Insurance.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
When is the best time to Buy Life Insurance?
The most glib answer is to buy it right before you die. The next-glib answer is to buy it right before you become uninsurable.
When deciding when to buy, some truisms should be borne in mind:
The older you are when you buy, the more it costs.
You have to be very healthy to get the best deal.
The worse your health, the more expensive the policy.
Once you have it, it cannot be taken away from you.
Medical conditions are scrutinized today more than in the recent past.
Some people with certain health conditions, occupations and hobbies cannot get life insurance.
Some other factors also influence cost.
For example, over the past few years most insurers have changed to a new mortality table in setting their premium rates. Since people are living longer than when the older mortality tables were published, the insurers can now expect to collect premiums for a greater number of years and hold onto the lump-sum death benefit longer before they pay it out to the beneficiary. So, the new table reflects greater longevity, which leads to lower premiums.
Is this a good time to buy term insurance? Term insurance costs have actually dropped by as much as half for a given age since the mid-'90s. In this decade alone, they have gone down about 4 percent per year.
For 2008, pundits are predicting that term rates will drop by only about 1 percent. Those same pundits expect the cost of permanent insurance - that is, whole life and universal life - to stay the same in 2008.
Some consumers believe that life insurance rates become very high if one waits until age 40 or later to buy. In reality, cost, which generally stays level after the policy is purchased, is incrementally higher for each year that one waits to purchase. And the older one is, the greater the increment from one age to the next. But there is no quantum leap.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to get the appropriate insurance policy while you are still insurable. Once you cross that line of uninsurability, all the money in the world will not buy coverage for you.
J. Brendan Ryan is a Walnut Hills insurance agent. E-mail him at jbryanclu@aol.com
When deciding when to buy, some truisms should be borne in mind:
The older you are when you buy, the more it costs.
You have to be very healthy to get the best deal.
The worse your health, the more expensive the policy.
Once you have it, it cannot be taken away from you.
Medical conditions are scrutinized today more than in the recent past.
Some people with certain health conditions, occupations and hobbies cannot get life insurance.
Some other factors also influence cost.
For example, over the past few years most insurers have changed to a new mortality table in setting their premium rates. Since people are living longer than when the older mortality tables were published, the insurers can now expect to collect premiums for a greater number of years and hold onto the lump-sum death benefit longer before they pay it out to the beneficiary. So, the new table reflects greater longevity, which leads to lower premiums.
Is this a good time to buy term insurance? Term insurance costs have actually dropped by as much as half for a given age since the mid-'90s. In this decade alone, they have gone down about 4 percent per year.
For 2008, pundits are predicting that term rates will drop by only about 1 percent. Those same pundits expect the cost of permanent insurance - that is, whole life and universal life - to stay the same in 2008.
Some consumers believe that life insurance rates become very high if one waits until age 40 or later to buy. In reality, cost, which generally stays level after the policy is purchased, is incrementally higher for each year that one waits to purchase. And the older one is, the greater the increment from one age to the next. But there is no quantum leap.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to get the appropriate insurance policy while you are still insurable. Once you cross that line of uninsurability, all the money in the world will not buy coverage for you.
J. Brendan Ryan is a Walnut Hills insurance agent. E-mail him at jbryanclu@aol.com
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