Best Websites

Since 1998 BestWebsites.com.my features thousands of best websites
in many categories of interest with descriptions/reviews given by leading
publications and webmasters.

Best Websites

	Web BestWebsites.com.my

14-04-2006 

The new math of life insurance  

By Marshall Loeb, MarketWatch  

Updates to specify the amount of insurance included in the costs in the chart is $500,000.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - The life insurance trade may seem the realm of stodgy numbers crunchers coldly estimating the chances of your demise and pricing their policies accordingly. In fact, it's a commission-driven, reel-in-the-customer business that's not nearly as static as it seems.

For that reason, people looking to buy a policy should heed some of the old advice - but by no means all of it.

Your basic choice is whether to buy term or cash value. Term is plain vanilla; it pays off only when you die. Whole life gives you more but charges you more. It basically offers term life plus a savings account; so you get a payoff after you've paid the policy premiums for a certain number of years.

Term is still a better value for most people, says Glenn Daily, a fee-only life insurance adviser in New York.

But make sure your term policy is convertible to a cash value policy. That way, if you should be in ill health as your term policy nears its end, you can convert and guarantee yourself another period of fixed, albeit higher, premiums. If instead you try to renew your term policy, your insurer is likely to catch on and charge you many times more than what you were paying.

If you do decide on a cash-value policy, the popular choices are traditional whole and no-lapse universal life, which enables you to pay some of your premiums out of the savings account. Variable life has gone out of vogue due to changes in tax rates.

Insurers such as Northwestern Mutual allow you to negotiate your agent's sales commission; so ask him or her to combine base coverage, for which the agent gets a full commission, with lower-commission riders for a tailored policy that costs less.

The following listings will give you an idea of the most you should pay in annual premiums on a new policy:

CoverageMale age 30/Female age 30Male age 40/Female age 40Male age 50F/emale age 50Male age 60F/emale age 60No-lapse universal$2400/$2000$3700/$3000$5700/$4600$9600/$760020-year term400/400600/5001400/10003600/2400

Figures are for $500,000 worth of coverage for nonsmokers in the preferred risk category in Florida, but the prices apply everywhere in the U.S., except New York. Source: Glenn Daily.  

Source: New York Daily News

Best Websites

Copyright © 2006 BestWebsites.com.my a collection of Best Websites