Why Should I Go To A Life Insurance Broker?
You're probably not going to like this blog post, but it's important that the facts be stated. If you don't have a life insurance policy in place, you're just being stupid. You might think that because your employer provides one for you, or because your parents left a trust fund for you or because your grandparents paid their premiums to put some cash away for later generations then there's no point in buying an individual policy now.
I'm here to convince you otherwise — even if all these reasons are true and have been accounted for as such by professionals in the industry. And don't get upset with them. Their job is to look at the data no matter where it leads. If the data shows that you're dead because you don't have an individual policy, then that's their advice: buy a policy from them or die.
You don't have to listen to them, but then they won't feel bad when you drop dead during your next motorcycle trip.
I'm not here to sell anything. I'm here to persuade you in a roundabout way so as not to appear as a salesman of insurance products. The insurance industry is like Big Pharma, Big Food or any other industry: they're very skilled at manipulating their consumer base for profit. I'm just here to urge you to take control of your own life and make some informed decisions for yourself.
I've written extensively about why everyone needs life insurance. I recommend that people have enough coverage on their own so as not to need legacies from others. If you think that's bad, imagine not having any at all! You'll spend a third of your life dead and no one will care. Other than the funeral home, no one will be there for you and you'll be forgotten by the world immediately thereafter.
Mr. Buffett is very rich and has a $62.5 billion fortune, but he's not going to be around forever. Neither are you, nor your spouse, or children. Think about it: you will die eventually and no one will think about you once that happens.
Your children and grandchildren probably won't even be alive when that happens!
That's the truth of the matter: all things must come to an end one way or another, and if you're dead they'll never have a chance to remember who you were or what impact you had in this world.
Life insurance is a fundamental way of ensuring that you're still remembered and acknowledged by the people you care about most. The sooner you get them to care about you enough to buy your own policy, the better off everyone will be.
I'm not going to go over all the reasons that life insurance is important, but I'll just summarize them as:
1) You're dead if you don't have any.
2) Life insurance is one of the biggest financial investments anyone can make and it can pay huge dividends if used properly.
3) Life insurance is an important way of ensuring that you're still remembered and acknowledged by the people you care about most.
4) Life insurance is a real financial investment into which real money is placed and which pays out if certain criteria are met.
The best way to get life insurance for you and your family is not through your employer or other tertiary channels. These types of policies typically have poor payouts and high premiums that usually don't even cover the agents' fees they charge to sell them in the first place.
If you want life insurance, then the best way to get it is to go directly to the company you want to do business with. Life insurance doesn't have to be expensive. If done right, it can be inexpensive in terms of premiums and also very affordable in terms of benefits.
Life insurance is not something for which you can walk in off the street and buy a policy right then and there, but it shouldn't cost $100 or more a month. A life insurance policy should be cheap enough that you don't mind using some of your own money for monthly premiums.
There's a massive difference in buying life insurance policies at different levels of coverage from the same company . You should look for a policy that pays out at a high level of coverage and with no deductible or exclusions. Insurance companies have different levels of coverage for the same type of policy, and there's a reason for that. Because lower ratios pay out less, their policies are more expensive and they have to earn more from those policies in order to cover those extra expenses.
That means that you'll need to shop around at different life insurance companies until you find one whose premiums are as low as they can be in terms of coverage paid out without paying unnecessarily high commissions to sell you the policy.
I've written before about why various types of life insurance payouts make some sense, but there's no need to repeat myself here again. You already know why you should have enough life insurance to cover your needs.
(If you don't know why you should have life insurance, then come back here after reading this blog post!)
The premiums won't be cheap because of the amount of coverage or type of policies each company offers. These companies are required to charge a premium which is close to the cost of their assets. If they didn't charge that much, then they'd be making money for nothing and not covering much if any losses at all.
In fact, companies with low ratios — those that pay out a lot, but still need to earn a profit before paying out claims — are more likely to lose money after all expenses than those with higher ratios. It's a tradeoff: the latter covers more, but loses more too.
This means that you need to find a company which offers life insurance policies at the lowest possible costs. I recommend that you shop around until you find one whose premiums are as low as they can be while offering what you need in terms of coverage.
That way, you'll ensure that your family is well taken care of even if something happens to you unexpectedly. You'll have peace of mind knowing that your family will not only be taken care of financially but also remembered and appreciated for who they were and what they did while alive.
Conclusion:
Life insurance is a good investment, but it requires significant planning and critical thinking. It's not something you can just sign up for without thinking about first. That's why the bottom line is that it's important to take control of your own life and make informed decisions about how to proceed with all things important to you.