Comments on: Life Insurance: How Much?

By: life insurance girl

life insurance girl — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:16:16 +0000

I have noticed lately that there are alot of concerns about life insurance policies and the fact that you have to keep them for at least a year or whatever the term says before you can actually bank on the policy. So if you get a life insurance policy and you die in 2 weeks, then you do not get the life insurance payoff because you died too fast (no matter what the reason is). It is important to check out the life insurance company you are going to be dealing with on this aspect.

By: Canadian Money Blogs Reviewer

Canadian Money Blogs Reviewer — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:29:13 +0000

what do you guys think about the need to get critical illness/disability insurance outside of what your work insurance already gives you?

By: Kevin Malone

Kevin Malone — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:37:05 +0000

As I understand it the mortgage insurance a lot of people have is a rip-off because the premium is based on the initial amount of the mortgage but the premium does not go down as the mortgage is reduced…so the advice my wife and I got was to purchase life insurance of the same level instead, since the life insurance will retain its full value (you continue getting what you paid for in terms of the premium/payout relationship).

By: Marcy

Marcy — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:15:34 +0000

Actually, it’s useful to have life insurance for children. I recall about 10 years ago when my cousin Steve was killed in a car accident, that my aunt said how grateful they were they had purchased life insurance from his university because it meant they didn’t have to pay too much out of pocket for his funeral, which cost about 15 thousand dollars. It does happen and paying out 15 grand in cash isn’t easy for all families. Furthermore, accidents do happen and it helps to have insurance on your children, should they have something awful happen and lose a limb.
What about making sure your mortgage has built in insurance so that if a spouse dies, the mortgage is paid off immediately?

By: Phil S

Phil S — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 03:36:46 +0000

Holy moly, everybody’s opinions are all over the board! I took a life insurance course but I didn’t complete it because my prospective employer is obviously out to oversell insurance to people and yada yada yada… Anyways, my opinion is very similar to Post #1 from Investorial.
Basically, you don’t want your family to live in poverty in the event of your death, but at the same time you don’t want them to hit the equivalent of a jackpot in the lottery when you die, either! Not only would you be paying ridiculous premiums, but you always want to be worth more alive than dead, so nobody knocks you off!
So, the basic minimum is to ensure that all of your family’s debts are wiped out. Next, everything else depends upon whether you have a working spouse and how long you would figure it would take if they were to remarry or whatever. You need to make some basic assumptions (like whether you want enough to cover the kid’s tuitions), then you just work out what they would need and work backwards.
Life insurance plans are quite flexible in that you can buy a menu load of riders with all kinds of different options available. My two cents.

By: Traciatim

Traciatim — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:20:22 +0000

I don’t understand why you would not want to insure your children. Sure it may not make much sense financially, but emotionally it may take somone years to recover from a blow like that. Each person reacts differently. I believe children should be insured at a rate (like Ryan above has) of funeral costs + 1 year of primary caregiver salary.

This will allow for the funeral to be proper, and people to take time off of work to recover and get their bearings again.

Knowing that if a child dies and you will be taken care of and have the ability to grieve at your own pace rather than returning to work after the 3 day berievement is well worth the minimal cost in my book.

By: Canadian Capitalist

Canadian Capitalist — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:13:54 +0000

Rob: Thanks for the detailed comment. I totally agree that it is imperative to get enough coverage.

By: rab

rab — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:17:52 +0000

I would suggest purcahsing life insurance once you decide to start trying to have children. When your wife gets pregnant nine months is a long time and something could happen to you before the child is born.

rab

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:46:24 +0000

I can’t quite recall what it is called but we do have a type of insurance on our kids. It is very minimal, basically it will pay us about 15k if either one dies.

Why would we do this you ask? Well, personally the last thing I want to worry about if something were to ever happen to one of my children is how I am going to pay for the funeral. Basically this insurance gives us enough money so that we will not have to take on debt in order to give our children a proper burial, and the cost is very minimal. I can’t remember off the top of my head but it was like $3 a month or something. It is attached to our 10 year renewable term insurance, so after 20 years we could drop it.

Anyways, just thought I would throw that out there to see if anyone has any opinions on this.

By: Crzay8

Crzay8 — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:06:54 +0000

The way I look at it is. You insure your assets and not your liabilities. Kids are liabilities so don’t insure them. While we’re on insurance topic Universal Life insurance is also a scam if you ask me. Do your home work before you buy UL.