Finance Tips

As you get older, the mortgage is paid off and the kids have grown up and left the nest, there’s a temptation to switch off. You feel you have done all the heavy lifting. The pension will be coming soon when you retire… What’s wrong with this picture? Well, the majority of people were trading in property and, when the bubble burst, they are looking at negative housing equity and the threat of foreclosure. Even those who stayed in their own homes over the years, often borrowed heavily against them. With the recession, all those investments in the retirement fund have lost their shine. Unemployment is a more real threat to middle and upper class families. Children seem to be staying in the family home for longer. And all this at a time when life expectancy is increasing. Ten years ago, people might have dropped their term life insurance policies and found themselves with more disposable income. Now the decision is more difficult.

With the credit crunch, the pressure is on to keep paying the mortgage, reduce the outstanding household debts and put food on the table. Those of you with permanent or cash-value life insurance policies have a slightly easier path to follow. Premiums will be fixed but, if you stop paying, the policies may remain valid. The decisions are to:

• keep paying, which builds up the investment value and protects the family by maintaining the death benefit;
• stop paying and leave the cash value untouched;
• withdraw or borrow some of the cash value; or
• cancel the policy which usually involves a big tax bill.

If a term life insurance policy is falling due for renewal, here’s how the choice looks: if you renew, the premiums will be higher because, suddenly, you’re older; but, if you let the policy expire, your family could be hit hard if you die unexpectedly. Many of you may have bought term life cover when you were younger. Perhaps you thought you would convert to permanent policies or simply drop the cover when your children had grown up. Now that retirement funds are shrinking, it’s time to take another look at term insurance.

Allowing for inflation, the premiums have actually been falling over the last ten years as life expectancy has been improving. Go back fifty years and only a small percentage of people lived beyond seventy. Now, many people live into their eighties and beyond. This has prompted competition among life insurance companies to attract business from older people. As long as you are physically fit, you are likely to find the rates little changed from the ten, fifteen or twenty year term policy that is due to expire. Naturally, there will be a health exam to ensure you will live a reasonable number of years before a claim arises, but the option to continue a term policy or to convert to a permanent policy are better than you might imagine. This is a good time to start talking to the life insurance companies to see what your options are.

Having your life insured, you are most likely to realize that your insurance coverage will be modified with the passing of time as you get older. When you are younger, most types of life coverage will be cheaper and won’t take much of your thoughts as the real need in such coverage comes later on in life. Still, no matter what age you are when you get your policy, at the first stage you might find that you are paying more than you have expected. Why is that so? Simply because it’s much smarter to pay more for the insurance at the initial stage and leave much less to be paid out as you move on.

And as you get older and your needs change, so will the policy covering your life. Insurance policies mature just like people, being paid off entirely and ready to be used when the moment comes. During this period some people may wish to sell their policies, as they are already paid for, and get the benefits without meeting insurance conditions. This is what insurance experts call “cashing in the policy”. Such a possibility is a great investment option as it allows you to finance things like your kid’s college education or your individual retirement fund when the need for such things becomes evident.

Fact is that a large part of life insurance policies available on the market today come with such adjustment possibilities. Insurance companies have become more flexible in terms of what you can do with your policy when you have paid it out in full. You can easily convert it to stocks, bonds or other financial tools you may find useful. Of course, when you choose to buy cheap life insurance solution the odds are that you won’t have many of such possibilities carried with it. You get what you pay for, and sometimes it really pays off to spend a bit more money.

The only thing that isn’t likely to change over the years is the amount of benefits your family will receive in case something happens to you. And the amount to be received will be the same with most policies, no matter for how long you have the current policy: several months or twenty years. This fact gives you a piece of mind in terms of coverage and return on investment, because you will be able to receive your benefits regardless of when you need them.

There are also certain types of policies that allow you to use the money from your policy in certain circumstances before you have paid out the policy in full or your insurance terms has passed. Such circumstances include serious illnesses, diseases or injuries that require long-term care or nursery, and leave you without a source of income for a prolonged period of time. These types of policies will certainly appeal to those who actually have increased risk of having such diseases or injuries due to their everyday activities.

But no matter what type of policy you choose to have for insuring your life, you have to remember that shopping around is really important in this market. There are many places you can get life insurance quotes and you should definitely do so, because sometimes the same policy with the same options and coverage amounts can cost quite differently between two companies. And why would you want to pay more?