There are two major types of life insurance—term and whole life. Whole life is sometimes called permanent life insurance, and it encompasses several subcategories, including traditional whole life, universal life, variable life and variable universal life. In 2003, about 6.4 million individual life insurance policies bought were term and about 7.1 million were whole life.
Life insurance products for groups are different from life insurance sold to individuals. The information below focuses on life insurance sold to individuals.
There are several different types of term insurance you can consider:
Term Insurance is the simplest form of life insurance. It pays only if death occurs during the term of the policy, which is usually from one to 30 years. Most term policies have no other benefit provisions.
There are two basic types of term life insurance policies—level term and decreasing term.
Level term means that the death benefit stays the same throughout the duration of the policy.
Decreasing term means that the death benefit drops, usually in one-year increments, over the course of the policy’s term. In 2003, virtually all (97 percent) of the term life insurance bought was level term.
For more on the different types of term life insurance, click here.
Whole life or permanent insurance pays a death benefit whenever you die—even if you live to 100! There are three major types of whole life or permanent life insurance—traditional whole life, universal life, and variable universal life, and there are variations within each type.
In the case of traditional whole life, both the death benefit and the premium are designed to stay the same (level) throughout the life of the policy. The cost per $1,000 of benefit increases as the insured person ages, and it obviously gets very high when the insured lives to 80 and beyond. The insurance company could charge a premium that increases each year, but that would make it very hard for most people to afford life insurance at advanced ages. So the company keeps the premium level by charging a premium that, in the early years, is higher than what’s needed to pay claims, investing that money, and then using it to supplement the level premium to help pay the cost of life insurance for older people.
By law, when these “overpayments” reach a certain amount, they must be available to the policyowner as a cash value if he or she decides not to continue with the original plan. The cash value is an alternative, not an additional, benefit under the policy.
In the 1970s and 1980s, life insurance companies introduced two variations on the traditional whole life product—universal life insurance and variable universal life insurance.
For more on the different types of whole life/permanent insurance, click here.
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Your Ability to Earn is Your Most Valuable Asset
Disability insurance pays an insured person an income when that person is unable to work because of an accident or illness.
There are two types of disability policies: Short-Term Disability (STD) and Long-Term Disability (LTD):
Short-Term Disability policies (STD) have a waiting period of 0 to 14 days with a maximum benefit period of no longer than two years.
Long-Term Disability policies (LTD) have a waiting period of several weeks to several months with a maximum benefit period ranging from a few years to the rest of your life.
Disability policies have two different protection features that are important to understand.
Non cancelable means the policy cannot be canceled by the insurance company, except for nonpayment of premiums. This gives you the right to renew the policy every year without an increase in the premium or a reduction in benefits.
Guaranteed renewable gives you the right to renew the policy with the same benefits and not have the policy canceled by the company. However, your insurer has the right to increase your premiums as long as it does so for all other policyholders in the same rating class as you.
In addition to the traditional disability policies, there are several options you should consider when purchasing a policy:
Your insurance company gives you the right to buy additional insurance at a later time.
The amount of benefits you receive from your insurance company is dependent on other benefits you receive because of your disability. Your policy specifies a target amount you will receive from all the policies combined, so this policy will make up the difference not paid by other policies.
The COLA increases your disability benefits over time based on the increased cost of living measured by the Consumer Price Index. You will pay a higher premium if you select the COLA.
This provision allows you to return to work part-time, collect part of your salary and receive a partial disability payment if you are still partially disabled.
This provision requires the insurance company to refund part of your premium if no claims are made for a specific period of time declared in the policy.
This clause means that you do not have to pay premiums on the policy after you're disabled for 90 days.
If you are like most people, every month you're reminded of just how much depends on a regular paycheck - your car, utilities, rent or mortgage payments - to name just a few obligations.
But have you considered the fact that an illness or injury could take away your ability to work and earn an income while these expenses do not go away?
All income is created in one of two ways, either from people at work or from capital at work. Dividends, interest and appreciation are the products of capital at work. Most people need disability income insurance because they have not accumulated sufficient capital to replace their current income.
If you are like most people, your income is the foundation that supports all of your future dreams, hopes and expectations. Your ability to earn an income is truly your most valuable asset.
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Because of old age, mental or physical illness, or injury, some people find themselves in need of help with eating, bathing, dressing, toileting or continence, and/or transferring (e.g., getting out of a chair or out of bed). These six actions are called Activities of Daily Living-sometimes referred to as ADLs. In general, if you can't do two or more of these activities, or if you have a cognitive impairment, you are said to need "long-term care."
Long-term care isn't a very helpful name for this type of situation because, for one thing, it might not last for a long time. Some people who need ADL services might need them only for a few months or less.
Many people think that long-term care is provided exclusively in a nursing home. It can be, but it can also be provided in an adult day care center, an assisted living facility, or at home.
Assistance with ADLs, called "custodial care," may be provided in the same place as (and therefore is sometimes confused with) "skilled care." Skilled care means medical, nursing, or rehabilitative services, including help taking medicine, undergoing testing (e.g. blood pressure), or other similar services. This distinction is important because Medicare and most private health insurance pays only for skilled care-not custodial care.
If you need long-term care services and have to pay to obtain them, what financial resources could you call on? Do you have enough to pay for four or more years in a nursing home, an assisted living facility, or home health care?
If you're over 65, don't rely on Medicare or private health insurance. Medicare doesn't pay for custodial care, and private health insurance rarely pays any of the cost of long-term care.
If you expect to have very little money when you need long-term care services, you might qualify for Medicaid, a government program that pays the medical and long-term care expenses of poor people. If you expect to be in that situation, you probably shouldn't buy long-term care insurance, because your state's Medicaid program will pay your long-term care expenses. Buying long-term care insurance would only save the state?not you?money. The exception is if you live in California, Connecticut, Indiana, or New York, states that have a Partnership for Long-Term Care program. For residents of these four states, buying long-term care insurance does offer an additional benefit.
If you expect to have a lot of money when you need long-term care services, you also probably shouldn't buy long-term care insurance. Instead, you should plan to pay for the care "out of pocket"?that is, as a regular expense. One financial advisor suggested in a newspaper interview that if your net worth is in the $1.5 million range, not including the value of your home, you could safely skip buying long-term care insurance and treat long-term care expenses, if they arise, as you do your other bills.
If you fall in-between these two categories, owning long-term care insurance, like all other insurance coverages, offers peace-of-mind benefits as well as financial ones. For example, a recent survey of people age 50 and over asked how confident they were that they could pay for long-term care services if they needed them. Among those with long-term care policies, 52 percent said they were very confident and another 40 percent said they were somewhat confident. Among those who didn't own a long-term care policy, only 8 percent were very confident and only 27 percent were somewhat confident.
But if you're under 85 and especially if you're under 65 that doesn't mean you should ignore the topic of long-term care insurance because:
You might already be unable to buy long-term care insurance. Wakely Consulting Group, an actuarial firm, studied applicants for long-term care insurance in 2003-2004; the findings: 11 percent of applicants in their 50s, 19 percent in their 60s and 43 percent in their 70s were rejected.
A Milliman & Robertson actuary estimated that 15 to 25 percent of the over-65 age group are uninsurable for long-term care.
A report from the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation indicates that over five million people ages 18-64 need some type of long-term care.
The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics (for 1999) reported that roughly 160,000 of the people living in nursing homes were under age 65 (nearly 10 percent of the total). Of those receiving home health care services, roughly 400,000 were under 65 (about 30 percent of the total).
So, unless you have so little money that you will qualify for Medicaid, or so much money that you can pay the bills out of your own pocket, you should consider buying long-term care insurance.
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