| Universal Life, differs from the traditional whole life by investing the
premiums in fixed-income securities that provide better rates than the
traditional whole life. You can choose to use the accumulated cash to buy
more death coverage or to pay the annual premiums, or both. |
| The amount of insurance you need depends on a number of factors such as
your mortgage payments, and the cost of education, health care and daily
living expenses of your family. You will also need to consider questions
such as: Is your spouse working? If not, will he or she require job
training to be able to provide enough income for the whole family? Will
your house be sold or retained? What effect will inflation have on your
estate? How many years will your children be living at home? Answers to
these questions will help in determining the amount of insurance you should
buy. Several rules of thumb and formulas are available to use as a guide
in deciding the amount of life insurance coverage you need. One of the
simplest is to take your annual salary, multiply it by 5, and minus the
coverage you already have. |
| In view of what we just experienced on naijanet from the passing away of
one of us and the subsequent discussion of life insurance, I am forwarding
this article to the net. I had written the article for the May 1996 issue
of the NACO (Nigerian Association in Colorado) Newsletter, and had posted
it on naijanet net about a year ago when a Nigerian passed away in
Baltimore and there was subsequent discussion of life insurance. The
articles addresses issues such as: |
| I would advise most people to dump cash value life insurance policies
and put the money in anything else -- even a passbook savings -- that
way all your money is working for you instead of buying a Lincoln Town
Car for your life insurance agent. |
| Whole life insurance protects you throughout your whole life, i.e., it is
permanent. The insurance is also structured to include some form of
savings or investment feature in addition to the life insurance policy.
Because it is permanent and includes an investment feature, it is much more
expensive than term life for the same amount of coverage. There are many
types of whole life; the differences are mainly in the way your premiums
are invested to build up a cash value. The three basic types are the
traditional whole life, universal life, and variable life, though other
varieties like the variable universal life and interest sensitive whole
life exist. The three basic types are described below. |
