UlTImATE SUccESS GUIdEWhat I am saying is to give serious consideration to what the economic
loss would be if one of the spouses were to die. I like the idea of buy-
ing enough insurance so the remaining spouse could live off the inter-
est from the death benefit while leaving the corpus alone. Also, you
would want to take into consideration any other income that the survi-
vor would have, like pension money, social security, or interest from
other accumulated assets.
So, to summarize:
If you are young and do not have much money, buy term and buy as
much as you can afford. Hope you make more money as you get older
or have a lesser need for insurance in the future.
If you have a short-term need like a loan or you just want to get your
kids through college, term may also be fine for you. If you have a long
term need like taking care of your spouse, income replacement, estate
taxes or a buy-sell agreement, then permanent insurance is probably
more of a fit for you.
The next question is one I often hear. “What company should I buy?”
This is a very important question. Lets start with term insurance.
If you need term only for a short-term need, it doesn’t really matter what
company you buy from. Buy the one that is the least expensive since
they will all pay the same if something were to happen. I would always
buy from a company that has a rating of at least “A” from one of the
reputable rating agencies. Standard and Poor’s is the best rating agency
in my personal opinion. Prices on term insurance vary wildly between
companies for the exact same coverage. For example, take a male of 50
who wants to buy $1,000,000 of 20-year term. Assuming he is a stan-
dard rate, based on todays rates the least expensive company would be
about $3,300 per year. Or you could buy the exact same coverage from
a different company and pay $5,590! It pays to shop around.
I know what you really like is going from insurance salesman to insur-
ance salesman day after day to shop rates, because you have nothing
better to do and this is how you get your kicks. Ha-ha!
Seriously, there is an easier way. You can go to the Internet and go to:
http://www.term4sale.com. This is a site that has most of the available com-
panies all in one single grid sheet. It will show you just about every