Depending on your situation the simple answer is… quite possibly.  In fact, single-premium universal life insurance, SPUL, may be one of the most overlooked, misunderstood life insurance products available today and rarely recommended by traditional life insurance agents. However, expert Tax-Free Retirement Specialists use this product frequently with their clients

Single Premium Universal Life is an immediate issue, universal life policy, which combines a death benefit with a savings account. It’s an easy and efficient way for consumers to purchase coverage and transfer wealth to the heirs — TAX-FREE.  Purchased with one single premium payment, this product is designed for people who value added security, flexibility, and cash value with lifetime coverage.

How do you fund a single premium life insurance policy?

One area where a significant amount of SPUL policies are being used is to consolidate stray life insurance policies with lots of cash value where the owner has no plans for the cash value.  By simply using the funds from those policies as a lump sum into a new single premium universal life insurance policy the new policy is usually larger than the sum of the smaller policies and is now paid in full.

Why use a Single Premium Life Insurance Policy?

The SPUL insurance policy can help clients meet a variety of financial objectives.

• Single-premium life policies require only minimal underwriting and are a good choice for the elderly or those with some health issues.
• Ownership of a life policy by the beneficiary or a trust can “remove” the asset from the estate for estate tax purposes.
• Advanced estate and legacy planning.
• Insuring a key employee or a business continuation plan.
• Policy loans from the cash value TAX-FREE
• Some SPUL’s will accept additional premiums if you believe you might want to deposit additional money later to increase your benefit.
• Provides a simple and efficient way to purchase coverage and transfer wealth tax-free. 
• Immediate issue policy purchased with a single payment. 
• Provides a policy with a death benefit much higher than the payment itself.

Single premium life insurance cash value increases much faster than a policy with monthly or annual premiums because it is funded with the entire lifetime premium at the issue of the policy.  Just like other insurance policies, upon the death of the insured the proceeds of the policy go to the beneficiaries free of federal income or estate taxes.

Can it be used as an alternative to an annuity?

The big advantage of SPUL is that it passes the death benefit to your heirs tax-free (although there may be estate taxes to consider).  In many cases, those benefits also will pass quicker to heirs outside of probate, a real plus for larger estates.

Because the annuity’s $150,000 growth was tax deferred the beneficiary will have to pay tax on $150,000.  Life insurance is always transferred tax-free with zero taxes due to the federal government.

Additional Benefits to the SPUL owner

Since an SPUL premium is paid in full at policy issue the policy is planned to last the owner’s entire life time.  The cost of the insurance of the policy will be paid from the cash value and any interest gain.  The only way that the policy will not last the entire lifetime is if the owner were to take out a tax-free loan from the policy for their use and not pay the loan back.  As long as the loan is repaid back into the policy, the insurance policy will continue to last the owner’s entire lifetime.

SPUL’s are the least understood life insurance product by traditional life insurance agents today.  By talking with an expert Tax-Free Retirement Specialist they can discuss your specific goals you are seeking to accomplish and assist you in determining if this is a the best product choice for you.  Click here to find a local Tax-Free Retirement Specialist in your area.

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“Fortunately, the life insurance industry has almost none of the problems of Wall Street… Until recently, permanent life insurance was arguably the financial industry’s most complex instrument. Fortunately, due to its complexity, life insurance is highly regulated to assure there are always sufficient, safe assets to honor its guarantees. This is referred to as statutory accounting. For more than 100 years, every life insurance death benefit has been paid.

All life insurance companies use statutory accounting. In addition, publicly traded insurance companies use GAAP accounting. It allows them to report the expected profitability of products that require reserves to back their contractual liabilities.”

Mr. Jones doesn’t take the point of view that life insurance companies can fail, several have indeed failed.  But for the other 99% of them, they have a proven track record of stability.  In fact, of those few life insurance companies that have failed, the other insurance companies bought up all of the failed companies policies.  Whole life and universal life insurance products are highly regulated for payment stability and have successfully been through good times and bad.

So let’s look at how about 99% of us struggle to make ends meet.  Many of us are in a position where we think that our lifestyle is consuming all of our earnings.  The belief is that every time we achieve a greater level of affluence, we increase the level of spending to account for that new found level of income.  There is an entire school of research called “behavioral economics” that says a human will consume what it earns or all that comes into his or her personal economy.  This is why it makes it difficult to save.  We’ve got to become better savers for our future retirement.

At www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com we educate people how to accomplish retirement savings and at the same time protect their loved ones with a life insurance product.  This can be an entirely new concept for many people who are accustomed to investing their savings in the highly volatile marketplace and losing lots of sleep watching it go up and down.

We hear that people think that insurance costs too much.  In a much published study, people know they need insurance but think they can’t afford it. However once educated on the true cost of insurance, they realize it is significantly less than they thought it was and they really can afford to protect their loved ones.  There are numerous choices of life insurance to choose from to protect and create a retirement plan; such as term life, universal, and indexed universal life insurance.

A universal life insurance policy is a perfect choice to begin a retirement plan.  Besides the obvious life insurance benefit, it force starts a savings plan that is guaranteed safe.  While term life insurance is obviously less expensive, the universal life policy is earning a higher rate of interest than any other safe investment product on the market today.  This savings element is compounded annually and if held for 10, 20, 30 or more years, it can yield a significant sum of money to supplement other retirement income sources.  Additionally, this money is tax deferred, safe from creditors in many states, has cash value you can borrow tax-free, and most likely has a living long-term care benefit.

At this point, would you say this is an expense or a savings? Is it a smart place to put your money? Any place you can save money is a smart place.  So the real question is, “is this a smarter place to put your money?”  Life Insurance Think Tank would suggest to you that buying a permanent life insurance policy that protects your family for the rest of your life is an excellent choice because it provides:

• Living benefits of long-term care should you require it while you are alive
• A death benefits when you pass away
• Tax-free payment of proceeds to your beneficiaries
•  guaranteed safe place to save money
• An excellent place to earn compounded tax-deferred interest
• The option of taking your cash out tax-free to for any purchase
• The option to take your cash tax-free to supplement your income when you retire
• Does not require you to pay it back into the insurance policy!

Permanent life insurance has stood the test of time and proven useful for a very long time.  Life insurance has been a common place for Americans to save money for decades.  But then the financial markets became all the rage to save money.  We’ve been through some difficult times with the markets and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future.  However, even during the previous rough market times, not one person who had their savings in a life insurance policy ever lost money.  Can you say that for anyone you know who was invested in the stock market?  Learn more about life insurance at www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com.  Find a Tax-Free Retirement Specialist here who can help answer your questions about creating a tax advantaged strategy for protecting your family and a retirement plan.

What is Life Insurance?

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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?

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But what if that didn’t happen tomorrow?  What if you died tonight and were no longer around to provide all those things that you’ve been doing for your loved ones? What if you were a single parent, now who would be providing for that loved ones left behind?  Without your income and all the other things you provide, would they be able to maintain the comfortable and special family lifestyle and togetherness that you were able to provide for them?

That’s where life insurance helps you help your family.  It can’t put your loved one’s life back the way it was, but it can make sure they have the world they’ve always known.  So if you think you need life insurance (or need more than you have), do something about it today.  Your family is counting on you.

With Valentine’s Day next week, besides bringing home that romantic gift to surprise your loved one.  Do something permanent for them.  Buy them a life insurance policy to protect them in case you aren’t around to.  Talk to your Retirement Life Solutions Specialist today to determine the best insurance for your family.

What is Life Insurance?

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Because of the true cost of long-term care to someone that needs it; insurers have increased LTC polices substantially over the last few years.  Several companies have pulled back and just as many have left the market completely.

Even though fewer companies are selling LTC insurance, the need for long-term-care planning remains greater than ever.  Today, there is a great deal of attention that is being focused on the aging of the population. As the Baby Boomer generation begins to reach retirement age, people are starting to realize that there may come a time when they could need assistance due to declining health or ability.

Because of increased life expectancy, many people will live 20-30 or more years beyond their normal retirement age. Yet, while they may be living longer, this does not necessarily mean that they will be living healthier. Therefore, from a financial standpoint, it is imperative that people plan ahead not only for basic living expenses in retirement, but also for the high cost of long-term care. From a retirement standpoint, a long-term care event is one of the few things that can really put a dent in someone’s retirement plan.

For those people who are looking to buy some sort of long-term care coverage, there is now more choices available then traditional long term-care insurance.  There are hybrid products that combine life insurance and long-term care coverage.  Several of these hybrid policies have a complete Return of Premium to the owner should they decide to cancel the policy before they use the long-term care benefit or have died.  There are single premium life insurance products that allow the owner to tap the death benefit while alive, as a living benefit, to pay for long-term care.  With both of these policies, if the LTC benefit is not used, the death benefit is paid to the beneficiary.

Finally, with the cost of long-term care increasing it may not be affordable to buy a policy that covers 100% of the expected daily expense.  That is the beauty of a long-term care insurance policy; it can be created for just about any amount of daily benefit that is affordable.  This allows the owner to share in the cost of future long-term care events if they occur and at the same time pay a lower premium for the reduced benefit.  Remember, having some long-term care insurance is always better than having none.

Speak with a Retirement Solutions Specialist to learn more about what are the best options for you.

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Permanent life Insurance, like medicine and technology, has evolved to the extent that it hardly resembles what it looked like just a decade ago. The basics have remained the same, a death benefit, premiums, and an inside cash value that accumulates over time.

What has dramatically changed is the way in which cash values earn returns. The latest generation of “index linked” policies combines the security of guaranteed cash values with interest linked to a stock market index. Let’s revisit the changes that have occurred over the past decade.

The history of the change goes back into the mid 1990’s in the annuity industry. Prior to this time, investors interested in tax deferred annuities had two choices available. Fixed annuities offered a guaranteed principal with interest rates determined by the insurance companies. Variable annuities used market based sub accounts, similar to mutual funds which offered higher growth potential but no guarantees to the principal.

Evolution of Life Insurance

•  Term Life

•  Whole Life

•  Universal Life

•  Variable Universal Life

•  Fixed Indexed Universal Life (FIUL / IUL)

The first Fixed Indexed Annuities (FIA) offered principal guarantees like fixed annuities while the return was tied to a market index like the S&P 500 or the Dow. The expectation was that over time, the indexed linked returns would outperform fixed rate annuities with no risk to losing principal.

The history of cash value life insurance policies has been quite similar to that of annuities. The original form of whole life insurance offered fixed premiums and guaranteed cash values which grew over time. In the 1980’s variable universal life policies were introduced that tied the growth of the cash values to mutual fund based sub accounts. Returns were potentially higher but without any guarantee of principal. However, market downturns caused investors to be wary of losing the cash values of life insurance as this could put the death benefit at risk.

Like the evolving of the Fixed Indexed Annuity, Indexed Universal Life (IUL) offers unique advantages to the policyholder. Premiums are flexible which allow investors to increase deposits into the cash value side without increasing death benefits. Sophisticated market indexes credit higher returns than similar equity indexed annuities. Principal guarantees offer protection against market losses. Truly, this “state of the art” innovation has made life insurance a legacy planning vehicle never seen before.

Find all of this a bit confusing? That’s where an experienced professional can help you sort through all the complexity and guide you. Talk with your local Retirement Life Solutions Specialist.  Make sure you ask lots of questions to learn both the pros and cons of any policy you are considering.

What is Life Insurance?

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