If your physician recommends tests or treatments and you don’t “follow the doctor’s orders, you may escape future medical problems, but you may pay the price if you apply for life insurance. We have seen it often in our office where an insurance company declines coverage for an applicant because a prescribed test/treatment wasn’t followed up on (it will show in the physician’s records). Just today a client was declined because his physician suggested he should get an EKG, but the client never received the treatment. The insurance company refused to offer coverage until the test was complete.

The moral of the story – if your physician has suggested treatment for you, follow through with it before you apply for life insurance.

In an effort to assist you in understanding your policy, I offer the following simple definitions:

• Death Benefit – The amount payable to your beneficiary upon your death.
• Beneficiary – the person or persons who will receive the death benefit upon your death.   You can name primary and secondary (or contingent) beneficiaries.
• Secondary Beneficiary – the person who receives the death benefit if the primary beneficiary is no longer alive.
• Premiums – the amount of money payable to the insurance company on a regular basis.
• Lapse – the cancellation of your policy when premiums have not been paid.
• Term Insurance – insurance for a specified period of time.
• Permanent Insurance – insurance that is as guaranteed to pay a claim as death is to happen.
• Health Class – a classification system used by insurance companies to determine the risk you present to the company.   The better the health, the lesser the risk.
• Insured Person – the person whose life the policy covers.
• Policy Owner – the person who owns the policy.   The owner and the insured are not always the same person.

I hope this helps.

• Single people – the rule of thumb here is, if there are those who depend on you financially, such as aging parents you might help support, life insurance would certainly be appropriate protection for that financial assistance in the event of your death. Another good reason for life insurance would be if you had substantial debt you didn’t want to burden your family members with in the event of your death.
• Young families – if you, as the breadwinner, were to die, would your assets be enough for your family to maintain the style of living they have become accustomed to? If the answer is no, life insurance proceeds should be enough to allow your family to continue the lifestyle you have provided them with. It can also help with longer term needs, such as college education for the children and retirement funds for the surviving spouse.
• Established families – my clients often tell me they won’t need life insurance after the children are grown and out of the house and assets have grown to the point where they can be self-insured. While many find out that accumulating enough assets to be self-insured is a much larger task than they had expected, even with an accumulation large enough, they find the needs for life insurance shift from the purpose of income protection to that of asset protection. Most realize that it would be difficult for their heirs to liquidate the assets comfortably and, therefore choose to keep life insurance for that purpose.
• Pre-retirees/retirees – at this stage, there are many reasons to have life insurance. If you are fortunate enough to have accumulated a large estate, life insurance can be used as a vehicle to ensure a smooth transition of assets to the next generation, without burdening them with estate taxes. If you don’t have a need for this type of protection, perhaps you can use life insurance to pay off your mortgage or bills or to cover final expenses.

At each stage, you should work with a financial professional who can help you select the right product to ensure the proper protection for your family.

When you purchase life insurance, you are preventing the financial loss others would occur upon your death. I’m not claiming that the following story is the reason I have chosen life insurance sales as an occupation, but it is a perfect anecdote for this topic.

When I was thirteen years old, my father passed away from a sudden heart attack. He was survived by myself, my two brothers (ages 8 and 16) and my mother. Naturally, the emotional loss was devastating to us as a family. The emotional loss was compounded by the financial loss caused by an inadequate life insurance policy. My father, who loved us dearly, only had a policy that barely paid the funeral expenses.

My mother, who had been a stay-at-home mom for sixteen years, now had to somehow support three young sons. To say life was difficult would be a gross understatement. If my father had purchased a sufficient amount of life insurance, the emotional loss would have been the same but we would have been able to properly mourn the loss of a loved one without having to deal with the prospect of financial ruin.

I hope this story inspires you to purchase an adequate amount of life insurance to protect your family from potential financial loss.

The way to prevent this from happening would be to secure life insurance on Santa’s life. In a rushed conversation with Ms. Claus (she was quite busy when I called), she informed me that she did, in fact, have a life insurance policy on Santa. I asked her if the proceeds from the policy would allow Santa’s business to continue should he pass away. She told me that the amount of insurance Santa had was barely enough to allow her and the elves to continue the mortgage payments on the North Pole home, let alone the retreat in Palm Springs.

For the good of mankind, I knew I had to come up with a solution. I couldn’t imagine a Christmas without Santa Claus. If I didn’t do anything, how would I be able to face my grandchildren in the future, knowing that I had a solution and didn’t do anything about it? With the prospect of losing the respect of my grandchildren looming heavily, I sprung to action.

I put my proposal together and went to visit with the CEO of Claus Enterprises, who, lo and behold, happened to be Ms. Claus. After I thawed out (I do live in Southern California), I sat down with Ms. Claus and explained key-person insurance to her. In insurance-speak, a key person is an individual who possesses a unique ability essential to the continued success of a business or firm. The death of this key individual could severely handicap the company. If Claus Enterprises had a policy on Santa’s life and he should pass away, the company would be able to hire and train a replacement for Santa (or several) to insure that “business as usual” continued. This could potentially include new custom made suits, reindeer retraining, etc.

Once Ms. Claus signed the policy, I turned to her and said, “Now about that life insurance policy that would barely cover your mortgage…” I walked out of her office with two signed applications and shouted to the elves on the assembly line, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night (I always wanted to do that)!”

Wishing you and your families a Happy Holiday season.

Check out this really cool life insurance commercial…

(Who ever said life insurance was boring…??)

1. Be Positive  Don’t fret about getting old. Have a positive attitude about aging and thios can add more than seven years to your life.

2. Smile  Smiling can change your attitude. It’s a great way to connect with people, change your outlook and counteract the effects of stress.

3. Drink Red Wine  Packed with antioxidants which protect your body against aging, but only if you stop at 2 glasses a day.

4. Solve Puzzles and Play Brain Games  Mind games are a great way to stay engaged, exercise your mind and entice your curiosity.

5. Eat Dark Chocolate  Like red wine, chocolate contains antioxidants. Choose quality dark chocolate and don’t binge… have a bit of it each day.

6. Have More Sex  What do you want me to say?

7. Make Exercise Play  What do you want me to say?

8. Sleep  Essential. Most people don’t get enough. Get 7 to 9 hours a night.

9. Spend Time With Loved Ones  Being connected means protection from loneliness, depression, and mental illness.

10. Relax Practice daily relaxation techniques and train yourself to turn off your stress. Replace it with calm energy.

I just checked these 10 tips with my partner and she told me I absolutely don’t get it. 

“Boring BS” to be precise… who cares about living longer???  It’s not about how long you live (unless you’re in the business of life insurance)… it’s about how much fun you can pack into the few years you have.”  “Just be present to each and every moment and laugh as much as you can”.

So there you have it…  clearly I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near this topic. 

Steve and I wish our readers a wonderful festive season.  Stay safe.  

Don’t shoot me I’m just the messenger here!

I’m only reporting what Canadian psychologist Stanley Coren had to say in his 1992 book – The Left-Handed Syndrome. He reported that left-handers, on average, lived about 10 years less than right-handers do. That’s what his data showed, but clearly no answers regarding why this would be so.

Now that’s a pretty serious statistic. If I was a ‘leftie’ I’d be dashing off to buy a life insurance policy. In fact, I’d buy it right now, online, so as not to lose a moment of my precious, remaining time.

So why don’t lefties rush off to buy life insurance?  They would be getting a bargain price relative to ‘righties’ and clearly they have the greater need.

And why too don’t life insurance companies have different premium rates for lefties?

Answer:  Because (by all accounts) Stanley Coren’s data was bulls#1t.

In 1993 scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University co-authored a study that showed no statistical difference in longevity between lefties and righties and that Coren’s study had been flawed.  

So don’t hold your breath waiting for a question on the old life insurance application asking which hand you use to sign your life away (so to speak)?

When it’s time to collect the proceeds from a life insurance policy, most people are not in a state of mind conducive to this kind of exploration. Being prepared before the event can save your family from compounding their grief with aggravation and frustration. Here is some great advice on how to organize your life insurance information to prevent this from occurring (from the Insurance Information Institute’s website – www.iii.org):

For each individual life insurance policy on your life, you should record the following information:

• The full name of the life insurance company that issued the policy
• The city and state of the home office of the company that issued the policy
• The name and U.S. headquarters of the group, if the issuing company belongs to a group of companies
• The policy number
• The date the policy was issued
• The amount of the death benefit
• The name and address of the agent/broker who sold you the policy
• The type of policy (e.g., term, whole life, etc.)
• The location of the original life insurance policy

You might have life insurance automatically from your employer. Your employer also might offer you the chance to buy additional life insurance under a group policy. And you might be eligible to buy life insurance under a group policy from your union or trade association or other group you belong to (such as a college alumni association or an automobile club). For each of these life insurance benefits, you should record the following information:

• The name of the employer or group that sponsors the insurance
• The office or person to contact when it’s time to file a claim
• The certificate number (comparable to the policy number under an individual policy)
• The date the insurance was started
• The amount of the death benefit

You’ve protected your family financially by purchasing a life insurance policy. You can also protect them from the pain and suffering from having to try to find out the answers to these questions in the event of your death.