Clifford

San Antonio Texas

Understanding universal life insurance is definitely a wise move to any person who wants to get coverage but wants their choices left open. Similar to whole life policies, this policy features a savings element known as cash value which accumulates over time and is tax deferred. A portion of your premiums are invested by your insurer and any return from these investments is credited to your policy. Universal life provides a guaranteed minimum interest rate usually around 4 percent. It means that whatever is the outcome of the investment performance, your insurer is liable for certain minimum return on your money.

By understanding universal life insurance thoroughly, you will know what it is and how it works. Most universal life insurance companies usually offer two death benefits options. First option is death benefit will be taken out from your policy’s cash value. The more policy you build up means lesser insurance cost for insurers resulting to cheaper cost of premiums. In the second option, insurer will pay directly the stated face amount on the contract in addition to any accumulated cash values through the years. Consequently, the second option bears more expensive premium charges.

With universal life plans, as long as you keep paying the minimum amount of premiums, the policy will stay in effect even up to age 120. However, if you aimed to build up significant amount of cash values, keeping up with minimum premium payments is not sufficient enough to attain it. So make a wise decision by understanding universal life insurance pros and cons.

Pros

As your needs change, universal life offers you the flexibility to adjust your options anytime while the policy is in force. Your adjustments may include your death benefits or premium payment amounts and schemes. With this feature, you are still ensured of a protection amidst certain financial circumstances.

Cons

The policy has the tendency to lapse if you have been paying too small premium payments for quite some time. In this case then, you and your family will be left unprotected. Furthermore, if your insurer does poorly with its investments, your interest return eventually decreases albeit never below the guaranteed minimum interest rate. If this happens, your cash values may eventually collapse thereby forcing you to pay higher premiums in the later years.

Frank

San Antonio, TX.

Frank,

Term life insurance is widely available on the Internet, from direct-to-consumer life insurance companies and from insurance agents and brokers.

If you want more than a death benefit from your term life insurance policy and like the idea of a long-term savings account (not insured by any federal agency) or stock market investment, you might consider cash value life insurance such as whole life, universal life or variable life. But be prepared to pay much higher premiums per $1,000 of coverage precisely because you are now funding a cash value account and paying fees and expenses.

Great Question.

A: When it comes to life insurance, everyone needs it. There is no way around it. However, there are options in getting life insurance so that it does not hinder your financial responsibilities.

Once you decide whether to go with whole life or term life insurance there will be different processes to go through in order to actually get the insurance coverage. The main difference in each of these life insurance options is a temporary insurance coverage or a lasting coverage.

The coverage of the life insurance can be decided according to the amount of debts the family is having or the number of dependents and their financial needs in case the unexpected happens. The term or insurance term can be decided on the time your children or dependents will take to become financially self-sufficient. You should also consider your financial needs and those of your dependents.