Life Insurance Advice Tips

What might be some good life insurance advice? Well, you've probably received your fair share of life insurance advice from friend and family. And, it's probably no good at all. You should never follow their advice about life insurance unless they are a financial professional or they have been super successful financially in their lifetime.

The usual person's notions of how much life insurance is "too much", what kind of policy is best for you, whether or not you should meet with an agent, what companies to go with, and how valuable life insurance is and what it's good for are, sad to say, usually distorted at best. The problem is that life insurance seems simple on the surface, so everybody thinks s/he's an expert. But life insurance is not as simple as it's made out to be.

So, what should you really take into consideration?

*Do you really need life insurance? The short answer is, "probably", because most people do at some point and if you're thinking about it then the odds are high that you need it. But, you might not need it. Contrary to how it's so often sold today, life insurance was never meant to be "permanent". Be very suspicious of "whole life" policies.

*Don't wait until you're too old to get life insurance. You limit your options and the premiums can be unaffordable. If you're at least 35 years old and have at least one child but don't have any life insurance (of your own; don't just go with what you get through work, if you do get any), you need to look into getting some right away. You should buy it when you're even younger, assuming you have a child (if you don't have a child, you may not need it, although you still may want to protect your spouse).

*If you don't have a child but definitely, without any doubt, plan to, then you still may want to buy life insurance right away.

*You can use Variable Universal Life Insurance as a major part of your total financial plan--assuming you'd like financial independence some day. This is different than Whole Life, so don't get it confused with that one. You can build wealth and minimize taxes with VUL, so don't hesitate to talk to an agent or planner about it.

*Don't throw away your money on special "riders" on policies. If you do your planning right you'll have all the life insurance you need from the base policy.

*Most people with life insurance are under-insured. You need eight to 20 times your current income as the face amount(s). That might sound like "too much", but it most certainly isn't.

*You can use the Internet to price compare, but don't buy life insurance online (unless you already know that you cannot get anything but "guaranteed issue" policies). Talk to local insurance brokers, meet with agents from top rated local companies and let them do an FNA with you (it's free), and talk to local financial planners. You can meet for free with all of them, and they know what they're talking about.