So you’ve come to the realization that you need to buy life insurance.  You’ve read and educated yourself at www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com and have some basic ideas of what types to review with your Retirement Life Solutions Specialist.  Before you make that call, there is one more thing you might want to get together before you meet with them.  You’re going to want to have a basic understanding of how much life insurance you need to buy. 

There are many calculators on the web and they all require that you enter a lot of information.  Life Insurance Think Tank has put together a simple and effective Life Worksheet for you to gather that information onto so you can use the best life insurance calculator on the web to come up with a starting point.  More complicated situations such as businesses, land owners, high net-worth clients, estate planning etc… will always need the assistance of Retirement Life Solutions Specialist to help you create and use tax advantaged life insurance products. 

Click here to find a Retirement Life Solutions Specialist who is an expert at working with tax-free retirement products.

Download our Life Insurance Worksheet to begin your planning. 

Remember, your family is depending on you.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

Remember… “You do it For Love”

Here are a few short videos that will bring a smile, laughter, and maybe a tear to your eye about some things you may not have thought about this year as you decide what to buy your loved ones for Valentine’s Day.

What would you do for love?

Bad Cupid

A Meaningful Gift

Crazy 4 Love

We’re glad we’re able to share these heartfelt images from The LIFE Foundation’s web site with you about this year’s Valentine’s Day gift.

Thinking of you always,

Your friends at www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

That’s right, Consumer Reports did a thorough investigation in its February issue about the wild amount of life insurance payouts that are NOT claimed.  The results came in at over an astonishing $1 Billion of life insurance benefits that are just sitting there waiting on beneficiaries to claim them.  Our question is how can this possibly happen, especially with the tracking ability and network of databases that is available today?  But I can also see it from the carriers perspective – How much time and money are they really going to spend just to give money away that the beneficiaries should be banging on their door for?  The entire thing seems crazy.

The best part is the Consumer Reports magazine actually calculated the chances that some of this money could be yours from a long, lost relative…1 in 600!  Much better than winning the lottery for sure!

Life Insurance Education

Recently, LIMRA (Life Insurance and Market Research Association) provided a life insurance IQ test to 4,000 Americans to gauge their knowledge and understanding of life insurance. Less than a third (1,200) passed the 10-question exam and the majority (55 percent) answered fewer than five questions correctly.

As an industry, life insurance companies and their agents are failing on educating consumers on life insurance knowledge.  While this is a poor reflection on the industry it validates our Mission Statement at Life Insurance Think Tank to provide valuable education to consumers.  You can help your family and friends increase their understanding about life insurance by sharing www.LifeInsuranceThinkTank.com  with them.

To read the full article Click Here

To check out your own life insurance knowledge, take the survey.

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Education

Some of the main alternative ways to use Life Insurance include bequeathing assets, wealth replacement, pension replacement, and income for college.  But there are numerous more that we will cover in a future blog.

We have all heard heartbreaking stories of families that had to give up land, farms, and second homes upon the passing of their parents because they couldn’t afford the tax liability that came with it.  Or perhaps one of the beneficiaries couldn’t afford it and forced the full sale of the beloved family property.  Regardless of the situation, it could have been avoided with life insurance.  Life insurance can serve as a way to “bequeath” money to your beneficiaries to ensure that your legacy and your beloved property can remain intact.

Similarly, another life insurance strategy is putting life insurance into a trust (which gives you the ability to specify how the payout is used) to make sure your spouse and/or beneficiaries whole on wealth replacement.  This is another way that prevents your spouse or beneficiaries from having to sell assets, stocks, etc just to make ends meet.  Let’s assume you have 3 beneficiaries of which all have different jobs and background.  Two of the three have great jobs, can afford the estate taxes that they are going to be faced with, and truly want to keep the nice land, homes, etc that they will be inheriting.  On the other hand, the 3rd beneficiary is in debt, has maxed out credit cards, and has no aspiration to keep those family properties.  With life insurance inside of an estate, you could spell out exactly how the death benefit should be allocated to avoid having your land and legacy be sold and lost due to one careless beneficiary.

The financial collapse of 2008 was devastating to millions of Americans.  One of the most common retirement issues that we hear is from boomer retirees is that they are just trying to make sure that they pass away with no money left in the bank.  Meaning that their biggest fear is outliving their money and now they would rather last right up until the day the money is all gone versus passing along a large inheritance.  Life insurance can work miracles in this instance by giving the retirees beneficiaries an inheritance and also (depending on the type of life insurance they purchase) can potentially provide some cash flow in the way of a tax-free loan against the life insurance while they are still alive.

Stay tuned for more life insurance alternatives.  Don’t forget to check out the “Truth About Life Insurance” series.

Life Insurance Education

In reality, life insurance has greatly evolved over the years and comes in a wide variety of forms.  Besides the standard death benefit, many of today’s life insurance policies are actually quite sophisticated with accumulation aspects, tax-free income opportunities (in the form of tax-free loans on universal life policies), long term care and confinement riders,  and some unique guarantees that most people don’t even know exist.  Financial advisors are slowly becoming aware of these unique characteristics of certain life insurance policies.  Combine that with the approximate 10,000 baby boomers hitting 65 every day for the next decade, and this could certainly be a perfect storm for  life insurance.  Our bet is that in a few years from now, life insurance will no doubt be considered its own asset class.

Get educated on life insurance today!

Walmart and Metlife have teamed up to cut out some middleman (life insurance agents and agencies) to see how many people will actually walk into a Walmart and buy one of these “life insurance in a box” policies.  These “life in a box” policies are very simple and very small (only $25,000 of coverage for one year) and use a prepaid card for the policy followed by a quick phone call to activate the insurance.

Metlife is hoping to increase their overall life insurance sales and save up to $600 million by cutting out the middleman by 2016.  On the other hand, we are certain that many of the long standing MetLife insurance agents are secretly hoping this doesn’t work because if this “life in a box” takes off, many MetLife agents will most likely be out of a job.

Life Insurance Education

Today, total life insurance premiums were at $537.6 billion (total in 2011) so the projected increase isn’t something to sneeze at.  Moreover, the $537 billion 2011 numbers represent a compound annual rate of change of negative 1.8% between 2007 and 2011.  The most lucrative segment was the pension and annuity division that captured $390 billion (approximately 73% of the life insurance market’s overall value).

We will keep you posted on the final numbers for 2012 as we get them and expect some big things in the life insurance and annuity divisions over the next few years.

Life Insurance Education