A NO NONSENSE GUIDE TO
LIFE INSURANCE
HOW MUCH DO YOU
NEED AND WHAT KIND?
I encourage you to speak with your insurance agent or an
SBLI representative about how SBLI can help you secure
the life insurance you need to protect your loved ones.
Best wishes for a wonderful financial future.
—JONATHAN POND
JONATHAN POND is one of America’s
most trusted and knowledgeable financial experts and a pioneer in bringing low-cost, personalized money guidance to American households. His work in educating the public on financial matters
has been far-reaching and widely recognized. His 16 prime-time public television specials and 21 books have been critically acclaimed for their effectiveness in providing useful and understandable financial guidance to people of all financial circumstances.
Buying life insurance is a three-step process: First, you’ll need to determine how much coverage you’ll need. Next, you need to decide what kind of policy to buy. Finally, you’ll need to choose an insurance company (sometimes called a carrier). This guide will help you master all three steps.
Deciding How Much Life Insurance You Need
Before you start talking to insurance agents, researching online, and reading policy booklets, you’ll need to determine how much coverage you need.
First, determine whether you need life insurance at all. If you have no dependents, you may not. But be careful; a spouse and children aren’t the only kinds of dependents. Your parents may need your financial
support in the future. And even couples with dual-incomes and no children may need life insurance if they spend at a level the surviving spouse couldn’t sustain alone. Finally, even if you have no dependents, you may want to use life insurance to benefit a long-term partner or favorite charity.
The next step is to realistically estimate the minimum coverage you need. If you have family members who are truly dependent on your income, a base minimum life insurance coverage should be the equivalent of six to eight years’ worth of your current net income (that is, your salary after taxes).
If you have young children, you should have six to seven times your salary in coverage. In theory, this would give your family time to get back on its financial feet if you passed away. If both you and your spouse work, you may not need quite as much. But it’s wise for each of you to have at least a couple of years’ net income in life insurance—more if you have young children.
Once you’ve determined your bare minimum life insurance needs, you can assess how much life insurance you think is appropriate. You may be confident that your family will be fine with the minimum amount of coverage. Or you may want to increase your policy so that in the event of your death, your family has enough to pay off the home mortgage or pay for your children’s or grandchildren’s college education, for example.
Changing Insurance Needs
Family insurance needs follow a cyclical pattern, so you may prefer to buy insurance that lets you change the level of coverage. As your family grows, you need more insurance. The need peaks when children are young and declines as they get older and closer to living on their own. Indeed, many people’s life insurance needs
decline significantly once the children are permanently out on their own. Retirees may not need any life insurance at all.
One more consideration: if you think your estate will be subject to estate taxes, you may want to use life insurance to help pay those taxes. And if this is the case, your life insurance policies should probably be placed in a life insurance trust. Your insurance agent or financial advisor can tell you more.
Online tools and calculators can help you determine how much life insurance coverage you may need. SBLI’s Coverage Estimator (www.coverage.sbli.com) asks some simple questions about your life circumstances and gives you a suggested policy amount.
TYPES OF LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES
Life insurance comes in two basic flavors— term and cash value—plus a hybrid, universal life. Term insurance is pure life insurance, while cash value insurance provides both insurance protection and a savings/ investment feature. The following will help you better understand the difference between term and cash value insurance, as well as the variations within each type.
Term Insurance
Term life insurance is designed for one purpose: to provide protection for your dependents if you die. Only your beneficiaries benefit from the money you spend on term life insurance premiums. Term life is relatively cheap, which often makes it the coverage of choice for young heads-of-household who
You can buy a term life policy that is quite flexible, allowing you to up- or downgrade coverage as needed. One of the drawbacks of term coverage, however, is that the older you get, the more expensive it becomes. On the other hand, some people need less insurance as they get older.
There Are Several Types of Term Life Policies:
1. Level Premium Term
Level premium term policies are particularly attractive for those who need life insurance protection for a specific period of time. Level premium policies provide a fixed amount of protection at a fixed annual premium over a fixed period of time, which generally ranges from ten to thirty years. For example, the parents of a young child might purchase twenty-year level term policies for each parent so that the family is protected until the child graduates from college.
If the term life policy you purchase has a fixed life span, you have to buy an entirely new policy when the policy expires. This means getting a new
“You can buy a term life policy
that is quite flexible, allowing
you to up – or downgrade
coverage as needed.”
Cash Value Insurance
Unlike term insurance, which only benefits your heirs, cash value insurance provides a savings/investment vehicle. Whether it fits your needs depends on numerous factors, including your age, financial circumstances, and risk tolerance. Cash value insurance comes in four main varieties:
1. Whole Life Insurance
Whole life insurance combines the protection of term insurance with a savings aspect. You pay a fixed premium for as long as you live, and the insurer pays a set death benefit. Since both the policy face value and the death benefit are fixed, you overpay for coverage at first but pay comparatively lower premiums later on.
A portion of each premium you pay goes directly to pay for the protection. The remaining amount is invested by the insurer on your behalf. Your “investment portfolio” constitutes the policy’s “cash value,” which can be withdrawn in the form of loans, added to the death benefit, or used to reduce future premiums. While whole life’s forced savings aspect may make it attractive to some people, premiums are steep compared to term insurance. Furthermore, whole life policies can’t be altered as your coverage needs change over time. But if you’re looking for certainty, whole life may be the answer. Many experts highly recommend the stability of whole life over other, more apparently flexible types of cash value life insurance.
2. Yearly Renewable Term
If health problems have arisen since you bought your earlier policy, you may not be able to get a new policy. One way to avoid this is to buy a “yearly renewable” term (YRT) policy, which allows you to renew your insurance without having to prove your insurability all over again. Make sure any term insurance you buy is annually renewable for as long a period of time as you are likely to need the insurance.
You can also buy a decreasing face value YRT policy wherby premiums stay level—or decrease slowly—while the value of death benefits decrease. Another alternative is a fixed face value YRT policy, where the premium goes up with each renewal while the value of the death benefit stays constant.
3. Convertible Term Policy
A convertible term policy gives you the option of converting your insurance from term to whole life with no
questions asked. This feature may not, under ordinary circumstances, seem particularly thrilling. But if your medical condition declines, owning a convertible insurance policy could be advantageous. If you convert the term policy before it expires, you’ll have insurance for the rest of your life regardless of your health.
3. Variable Life Insurance
This hybrid policy gives you a large measure of control over the cash value buildup. As with whole life and universal life insurance, a portion of the premium buys pure protection while the rest is invested by the insurance company on your behalf.
While whole life premiums are invested in low-yielding but safe securities, variable life premiums are invested according to your preferences. You can direct the company to invest in one of several combinations of stock, bond, and/or money market mutual funds. Variable life insurance may be right for you if you like to take a hands-on approach to money management. The returns you can achieve may be an improvement over the performance of more conservatively invested whole life portfolios.
There are two kinds of variable life policies. Straight variable life has a fixed annual premium. The more popular universal variable allows more flexibility: the policyholder can vary the premiums as long as the basic minimum payments for death benefits are paid. So in addition to deciding how to invest the money in your policy, you can choose how much to invest. But with the increased possibility of reward comes increased risk. The death benefit of a variable life policy never
2. Universal Life Insurance
Universal life insurance combines the protection of a conventional term insurance policy with the current yields available from short-term investments. Universal life policies separate the insurance component of the policy from the cash value. Part of your premium goes toward pure protection, and the rest is the cash value of the policy, which earns interest according to a company contract or agreed-on financial index. Unlike the cash value of a traditional whole life policy, the cash value of a universal life policy grows at a variable rate.
Universal life policies also offer greater flexibility for tapping into cash value than other types of insurance do. Under most traditional whole life policies, you must either take out a loan or surrender the policy to access the built-up cash value. With universal life—and some whole life policies—you can make partial withdrawals from the policy’s cash value through the receipt of dividends.
Universal life does have its drawbacks. As an investment product, the returns offered by universal life—like most insurance products—may not always stack up against other savings and investment vehicles. Also, company fees and agent commissions are generally
have access to cash value through loans. Given the way single-premium policies are structured, the emphasis is usually on investment, not insurance.
Travel Insurance
You no doubt have seen ads for accidental death insurance in airports. Policies are
sometimes sold right out of vending machines, at what appears to be a ridiculously low cost. The cost is ridiculously low because the
chances of your survivors ever benefiting from one of these policies are also ridiculously low. Some credit card companies also offer travel insurance at an extra cost. Believe me, they are making a bundle on this outrageously expensive insurance. Bottom line: Don’t buy travel insurance.
amount of cash value is not guaranteed and could be severely reduced if the company’s investment portfolios perform badly. While the policyholder can choose the type of investment, insurance company money managers or their designees still choose the underlying securities.
Variable life insurance cash values, like all cash value insurance, do receive favorable tax treatment. Cash value increases are not taxed until the money is withdrawn from the policy. In other words, policyholders get tax-deferred growth of their policy’s cash value.
4. Single-Premium Life Insurance
If you have substantial cash reserves, single-premium life insurance may be an attractive option for building tax-deferred savings for retirement. By paying a single lump sum— which can be as low as $5,000—you can purchase death benefits and a cash value that grows tax-free.
Single-premium policies may offer attractive interest rates, but they usually impose stiff penalties for canceling the policy in the first few years after purchase. Policyholders
CASE STUDY
Roderick Blake is 35. Roderick and his 33-year-old wife, Clarissa, have two children ages 7 and 3. The Blakes have a combined annual income of $75,000. (Roderick earns $45,000, Clarissa earns $25,000, and their investments earn about $2,000 a year.) Should Roderick die tomorrow, his pension, in which he has only recently been vested, would be worth $3,000 a year.
At Roderick’s death, annual income would be available from the following sources:
Roderick estimates that in order to finish educating the children while maintaining his family’s current standard of living and to provide Clarissa with a fund that would provide for her retirement, the family would need about 80 percent of their current income level, or $60,000 of annual income ($75,000 x 80 percent).
Based on these assumptions, Clarissa would have an annual income shortfall of $30,000 ($60,000 - $30,000) should Roderick die. Roderick would need whole life insurance in the amount of $600,000 to provide $30,000 in annual investment income, assuming that the insurance proceeds could be withdrawn at a rate of 5 percent per year.
Roderick estimates that, in fact, the
investments could earn 7 percent interest, so Clarissa would actually earn $42,000 per year from the invested insurance proceeds. She would, however, have to reinvest $12,000 ($42,000 - $30,000) to ensure that the amount that is to be withdrawn will increase each year to keep up with inflation.
Roderick’s $600,000 in insurance is a lot more than a bare minimum of four to five years’ net income, but he prefers to provide the family with a higher level of financial security. Now that he has determined how much insurance he needs, Roderick can shop for the best policy or policies. A similar analysis should also be prepared to estimate Clarissa’s life insurance needs.
CLARISSA’S EARNINGS $25,000
Investment portfolio $2,000 Survivor pension benefits $5,000
What’s the upshot? Like most things in our financial lives, term versus cash value insurance should not be viewed as an either/ or proposition. You may be best served by a combination of term insurance to provide needed protection for your dependents and cash value insurance to provide additional protection and accumulate tax-deferred savings.
A Final Suggestion
There’s a lot to do to achieve a better and more secure financial future, including saving regularly and investing those savings wisely. Making sure you and other family breadwinners have sufficient life insurance coverage is no less important. I encourage you to speak with an SBLI representative about how SBLI can meet your life insurance needs.
You can talk to an SBLI representative at 888.438.7254 or chat online at SBLI.com.
—Jonathan Pond
SHOULD YOU BUY TERM OR CASH VALUE INSURANCE?
For as long as people are buying and selling insurance, they’ll be debating the merits of term and cash value insurance. The question is: which kind is right for you, right now? Term insurance is usually cheaper in the long run than cash value insurance. If
you’re concerned about providing the most insurance coverage at the lowest cost now and the bulk of your life insurance needs will eventually diminish, emphasize term.
Nevertheless, there are benefits to cash value insurance. People who have difficulty disciplining themselves to save regularly can benefit from cash value insurance’s forced savings feature. Even disciplined savers can take advantage of the tax-deferral feature of cash value life insurance as part of a program for saving for retirement. And in spite of fees and commissions, some cash value insurance products offer attractive, tax-advantaged returns on the investment portion of the policy. The problem with trying to meet all or most of one’s life insurance needs through cash value insurance is that it can become prohibitively expensive.
