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What Is Involved In Buying Life Insurance?

Every insurance company has their own underwriting and actuarial departments with their own formulas and data to tell them who is and isn’t a good “risk” to take on when it comes to issuing a life insurance policy. These formulas and data sets also help the companies determine how much to charge and what amounts of life insurance to provide over what periods of time. It’s a very interesting and fascinating process if you like statistics, data, and that type of science. If you are like most people, you probably don’t care a whole lot about the process.

I am telling you this so that you will understand that the process and underwriting requirements I am going to mention here are an overview and not the exact process because it will vary depending on the company and product you choose and even the amount of insurance you are wanting.   

So you decide it’s time (or more likely past time) to get yourself or someone you love some life insurance. You’ve read my post No Matter Who You Are, No Matter Where You Live, There Is Only One Universal Guarantee, YOU WILL DIE! about the importance of life insurance for everyone and my post You Know You Need Life Insurance but Don’t Know What To Buy about the basic types of policies available. Perhaps you’ve even read other pieces online or heard someone talk about the concepts before. Now you want to get an idea of what will be asked of you in order to make this concept a reality. Continue reading “What Is Involved In Buying Life Insurance?”

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You Know You Need Life Insurance but Don’t Know What To Buy

*Disclaimer/Disclosure – I am not a licensed agent in all states and I am not providing recommendations or advice as to specific companies or products within the industry.

As we already discussed in No Matter Who You Are, No Matter Where You Live, There Is Only One Universal Guarantee, YOU WILL DIE!, everyone needs life insurance because everyone will eventually die.

*The only caveat to that is if you are wealthy enough to “self insure” for your final expenses and are happy with what you will be leaving to your heirs based on your net worth.* I would argue that even in this position, you would still be wise to utilize strategies involving life insurance to expand on your net worth upon your death and be able to leave even more to your family, friends, and charitable causes. I know there are some financial people out there that don’t believe in any life insurance products other than term insurance and they encourage the concept of “buy term and invest the difference”. It has not be my experience that this is the best way to go and I don’t believe that a “one size fits all” approach such as this is ever appropriate in personal finance. Continue reading “You Know You Need Life Insurance but Don’t Know What To Buy”

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Is Your Vehicle Your Second Home? Does It Look Like It Is?

How much time do you spend in your vehicle whether it be actually driving or waiting around for a child or sitting in it because you just don’t want to go inside yet?

Perhaps you commute to work like many people do or maybe you spend a lot of time doing carpool to and from school and extracurricular functions. Perhaps you are like me and you spend a lot of time driving for business activities, volunteer functions, various board activities, and transporting kids to various activities and events. Continue reading “Is Your Vehicle Your Second Home? Does It Look Like It Is?”

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Keeping It Straight, A Way To Organize Those School Papers

Several years ago I was completely overwhelmed by the piles and piles of school papers building up in my house. I was also concerned about how to manage the guilt of deciding what was important enough to keep and what wasn’t. As a mom everything that the kids brought home from school was special and important, but as a practical person with a desire for cleanliness and organization, I knew tough decisions had to be made. Continue reading “Keeping It Straight, A Way To Organize Those School Papers”

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Did You Know Christmas and Birthdays Happen At The Same Time Each Year?

We all know that Christmas is December 25th and family members have birthdays every year on the same date each year, but we struggle to financially plan for them. Most people also have other expenses that come up only once a year but are usually pretty consistent as far as when in the year they come due, yet we don’t always plan for those either.

I found it was mostly an issue of poor planning and lack of organization on my side. Luckily, that was an easy fix. I developed an insert for my organizational planner and for my finance binder. You can get a copy of it for your finance binder HERE. Continue reading “Did You Know Christmas and Birthdays Happen At The Same Time Each Year?”