One of the areas that we help our clients with is general information about life insurance. It’s a very, very large topic and a term that people have a lot of confusion about.
There are a couple of key issues in relation to life insurance that I would like to bring to your attention. The bottom line is this: a brief conversation with an agent on how to use life insurance in your financial planning would be very, very beneficial to you.
Life insurance planning matters whether I’m talking about being 20 years of age, just beginning in life. Maybe I’m single or I’m about to be married. Then there are young couples, starting to have children. Then when I get to be in my 40s or my 50s, and then for some of us in our 60s, 70s, and our 80s, why do we need life insurance?
Think of Life Insurance as Cash
The key thing I would say about life insurance is to think of it as liquidity. It’s cash. When we’re faced with the serious life event of someone’s death, we need cash. It could be anybody’s death: family or friends or coworkers. In these various situations, we need cash.
You either have that cash in your savings account or in your investments or you use the influx of cash from life insurance. So life insurance is liquidity. Think of life insurance as liquid cash at a very traumatic time of life. It’s going to be very instrumental in helping you at this time.
When Should You Get Life Insurance?
When do you want to start acquiring life insurance? You want to get life insurance as early as possible. One of the key issues in acquiring life insurance is that you have to medically qualify for that insurance. You’ll have to qualify for life insurance based on your medical history, for example, if you have heart disease, diabetes, or you’re a smoker, drinker, whatever the case is.
Your occupation can also affect it. If you’re a high school student and you don’t know what you’re going to do, but you end up serving in our military, in that hypothetical situation, that prevents you from qualifying for life insurance. Your occupation as well as your duties and your family history all affect your qualifications for life insurance.
When to apply for life insurance, then? When you have the most favorable conditions to be qualified. The sooner you can acquire that insurance, the better.
Acquiring Supplemental Insurances
Some people have supplemental insurance needs. Aflac policies or supplemental specialty policies may be desirable in addition to life insurance. Generally, before a person dies, there may be a failing of health with intense medical needs. That’s going to require a lot of cash. That life insurance will help at the end, but it doesn’t help anyone through those times. That’s what some supplemental types of insurance would do.
If I should be a father and the Lord calls me home early, does my wife have enough cash to provide for those dreams that we have for our children? It’s smart to do college planning along with plans for life insurance.
All these issues are going to be important to take into account when you are thinking of life insurance. They’re very easy to talk through, it’s very easy to qualify. We can help walk you through this process. We are happy to help any time we can. Give us a call at (314) 544-5400.
