4 Things Life Insurance Is Not

Are you confused about life insurance? I don’t blame you. When I first started writing about finances more than a decade ago, my understanding of life insurance was limited.

I knew about life insurance because it was offered through my employer, and I thought a $50,000 policy was a lot of money. I also recognized insurance company names from late-night TV commercials and the occasional bit of junk mail.

I understood “insurance” to be that stuff that you had to have for your car, your home, and your health. The “life” part was a big, blurry blob of “other.” If that’s how you’re feeling, here are a few tips that might help bring things into focus—by understanding the “nots.”

1. Life insurance through work is generally NOT enough. Since learning this myself some years back, I’ve noticed that many people never explore life insurance past what is offered through their work. Policies through work are a great benefit to have, but are usually limited to one- or two-times your salary or a fixed amount like $50,000. Plus the coverage typically ends when your employment there does.

How far will an amount like that go when you consider what’s left behind for your loved ones: the loss of your income and mostly likely debts and bills. What about things like rent or mortgage, child-care and education costs?

An easy way to get a working idea of how much life insurance you need is with a Life Insurance Needs Calculator from a neutral source like www.lifehappens.org/howmuch.

2. Life insurance is NOT a luxury item. Many people have not even considered buying life insurance because they’re convinced it’s a luxury. In a recent study by Life Happens and LIMRA, consumers thought the cost of a 20-year, $250,000 level term life insurance policy for a healthy 30-year-old was three times higher than it generally is. Younger people, in particular, overestimate the cost of a term policy by a factor of five.

If you took a guess at what that policy above would cost, what would you say? It comes out to about $13 or so a month for that policy. Definitely not a luxury—most of us spend more than that on a[…]

###

Continue reading this Life Happens article.