2.   Life Insurance is a must if you have a family and those life insurance premium payments will only bring you peace of mind and security knowing that you are your loved ones are financially secured.

3.  You should get Disability Insurance at an early age because you are young and you have no adverse health history to report and you can lock in the rates at early stage.  Decide how much individual coverage you can afford and to save a few bucks on the premium extend your waiting period before benefits kick in from 90 to 180 days.  Always obtain the longest benefit period possible that protects you in your “own occupation”. Look very closely at policies that only protect “your own occupation” for 24 months then require you be disabled from every occupation based on your training, education and experience.  “Most importantly, take a hard look at the ‘limitation on benefits’ section,” says Darras. “Many carriers limit mental/nervous claims to 24 months, offer no benefits for pregnancy and cap self-reported claims like chronic fatigue syndrome, headaches and fibromyalgia to 12 months.” — Don’t be fooled into believing the group disability coverage from work is going to protect you. It’s taxable, the benefits offset dollar for dollar. Look closely at your group policies; they are nothing to depend on.

4.  LONG-TERM CARE — “Understand what services the long-term care policies cover and who can provide the care”. “Find a good, reliable, claims paying insurer and research the Company’s commitment to Long-term care. Check the overall financial strength and size of the Company and ask how many times they have increased their rates in the last ten years. — If you need long-term care, ask if you can have the care provided: in your home, by a family member or friend, in the home of a family member, in an adult care service facility, in an assisted living facility, a hospice facility or in a nursing home. Understand the policy terms custodial, intermediate and skilled care and consider which type you may need and how soon”. — Never buy from a company you don’t recognize. What good is a policy with really cheap premiums from a company that won’t be in business 20 years from now?

For more information see http://www.sbd-law.com/ or call 800-458-4577.

A life settlement transaction is the sale of an in-force life insurance policy by the owner for an amount more than the policy’s cash surrender value and less than the face or death benefit payable under the policy. Exhibit 1 shows a functional diagram of the transaction “players” in a life settlement transaction. In the context of this article, a life settlement transaction involves the sale of an in-force, non-variable life insurance policy by the owner of the policy (which may or may not be a life settlement provider) to a “passive” investor. A “passive” investor for these purposes is an investor who, although perhaps sophisticated, experienced and capable of bearing the economic risk of the investment in a life settlement, does not directly perform or cause to be performed the medical due diligence with respect to the insured–including performing the life expectancy analysis and an actuarial valuation of the policy–and does not negotiate directly with the owner, determine premium payment optimization, arrange for the payment of premiums and tracking of the life status of the insured, or file the death benefit claim under the policy. A life settlement broker typically represents the owner of the life insurance policy in the sale of the policy. For purpose of this analysis, the focus is on the activities of the life settlement provider that buys or arranges for the purchase of the policy and “packages” the sale for the benefit of the passive investor by conducting extensive pre-sale activities and bundling post-sale services in the product purchased by the investor.

In discussing the pertinent securities-related issues surrounding life settlements, there are three fundamental questions which need to be addressed:
    * Does the sale of the life insurance policy involve the sale of a “security” under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “1933 Act”)?
    * Do the “registration” requirements under the 1933 Act apply?
    * Do sales activities in connection with the sale of the life insurance policy trigger any broker-dealer registration requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “1934 Act”)?

LIFE SETTLEMENT TRANSACTION AS A SALE OF A “SECURITY”
    Does a life settlement transaction involving the sale of a single life insurance policy to a single, passive investor involve the sale of a security for federal law purposes? In all probability, the transfer of ownership of an entire policy (as well as fractionalized interests in a policy) to a “passive” investor does involve the sale of a security. Let’s work our way up to it.
    No one can argue anymore that the initial sale (i.e., issuance) of a variable life insurance policy by a life insurance company (and its investment company affiliate which establishes the separate account into which investments made under the policy are made) does not involve the sale of a security, fractionalized or not. From this, it easily follows that the resale of a variable life insurance policy into the secondary investment market in a life settlement transaction also involves the sale of a security.
    In S.E.C. vs. Mutual Benefits Corporation, 403 F.3d 737 (11th Cir. 2005), the federal Circuit Court for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the sale of life insurance policies in viatical settlement transactions involved the sale of “securities” for federal purposes. In that case, the Circuit Court of Appeals refused to follow the Life Partners case, which the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided nine years earlier (S.E. C. vs. Life Partners, 87 F.3d 356 (D.C. Cir. 1996)) and held to the contrary. Neither case distinguished between fixed and variable policies underlying the life settlement transaction, and the focus was on fractionalized policies. Although there were some whole policies sold directly to individual investors in the Mutual Benefits case, whether the policies were fractionalized was not a core feature of that case. The Life Partners decision was roundly criticized by legal scholars and, more importantly, by state security commissioners. In fact, in the wake of that decision many states amended their own state security or blue sky statutes specifically to define, as a security, life and viatical settlement investments.
    Established United States Supreme Court precedent defines the term “investment contract,” one of the enumerated terms under the statutory definition of a security in the 1933 Act, to be an investment in a common enterprise with the expectation of profit derived solely from the efforts of a promoter or others (S.E.C. vs. W.J. Howey Co., 328 U.S. 293 [1946]).
    Other cases define whether the expectation of profit must be solely or predominantly from the efforts of the promoters, with “predominantly” winning out, and whether the common enterprise concept requires a pooling of investor funds (horizontal commonality) or just the relationship between the promoter and the investor (vertical commonality), with vertical commonality–the least restrictive test–prevailing, at least in the Eleventh Circuit in the case of investments in viatical settlements under the Mutual Benefits case.
    In Life Partners, the Court held that because the efforts of the promoter were principally pre-sale, (i.e., securing the policies, packaging the policies, conducting the medical examinations (or at least studying the medical histories), evaluating life expectancies, pricing the investment to be made by the purchasers, preparing all of the contractual documents, etc.) and there were very few post-sale activities, no “security,” for federal securities law purposes, was involved.
    The Mutual Benefits decision rejected that notion. The Court held that the Howey test did not require a distinction between a promoter’s pre-sale and post-sale activities and that significant pre-purchase managerial activities undertaken to ensure the success of the investment may also satisfy the “solely on the efforts of the promoter or a third party” prong of the Howey test.
    However, there are no published federal cases that examine the question of whether the sale of an entire fixed, non-variable life insurance policy to a single investor, as opposed to fractionized interests in a life insurance policy, constitutes the sale of a “security.” It is possible a court might conclude that the sale of the entire life insurance policy, in contrast to the sale of a fractionalized interest in the life insurance policy, does not involve the sale of a “security,” but that would be an unexpected result in today’s regulatory environment.
    In Life Partners, the court did comment in dicta that, “[P]resumably, a firm might also buy insurance policies for its own account or act as an agent, matching a single investor with a terminally ill insured, without running afoul of the security laws. That is not how [Life Partners] does business, however” (87 F.3d 536 at 539). At the time Life Partners was argued in 1995, the position of the SEC was to the effect that a straight viatical settlement was not a security. By that, the SEC meant that the naked sale of the life insurance policy, without more, did not give rise to concerns under the federal security laws. What did raise those concerns for the SEC, however, was whether the sale of the life insurance policy “as packaged, offered, sold and administered” crossed the line. The SEC did not prevail on that issue in Life Partners, but it was resoundingly successful ten years later in Mutual Benefits.
    There have been state court decisions where the courts concluded that matching single policies to single investors did involve the sale of an investment contract and thus a security under a Howey analysis. See, e.g., Marshall L. Peaslee vs. Accelerated Benefits Corporation, et al., 818 N.E.2d (Ind. Ct. App. 2004); Siporin, vs. Carrington, et al., 200 Ariz. 97 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2001). Numerous other federal district court decisions also conclude that life settlement investment programs are deemed to involve the sale of securities under federal law. See, e.g., Wuliger vs. Christie, 310 ESupp.2d 897 (N.D. Ohio, 2004) and cases cited therein.
APPLICATION OF REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS
    The next question is, assuming the sale activities involve the sale of a “security,” do the registration requirements of the 1933 Act apply?
    Unless the sale involves either an exempt security or is an exempt transaction under Sections 3 and 4 of the 1933 Act, the registration requirements apply.
    There is an untested argument that the sale of an entire fixed, non-variable life insurance policy to a single investor is the sale of an exempt security under Section 3(a)(8) of the 1933 Act. Simply stated, that section exempts the sale of a life insurance policy issued by an insurance company.

Section 3(a)(8) of the 1933 Act Provides
    Section 3 Exempt Securities Except as hereinafter expressly provided, the provisions of this title shall not apply to any of the following classes of securities:
    (8) Any insurance or endowment policy or annuity contract or optional annuity contract, issued by a corporation subject to the supervision of the insurance commissioner, bank commissioner, or any agency or officer performing like functions, of any State or Territory of the United States or the District of Columbia;
    It would be “aggressive” to rely on this exemption, however, primarily because the law is relatively clear that the sale of a fractionalized policy is a security, and the sale of an interest in a pool of policies is a security, so why shouldn’t the secondary sale of a single policy to a single investor also involve the sale of a security? In fact, in Life Partners, in the context of its life settlement fractionalized program, the court rejected the defendants’ argument that the Section 3(a)(8) exemption should apply. See 87 F.3d at 542. The distinction between fractionalized and non-fractionalized might be considered by a court to be just as artificial as the pre vs. post sale promoter efforts rejected in Mutual Benefits. One of the important issues under this exemption is whether the purchaser is at investment risk or simply financial/solvency risk. (See the Variable Life Insurance case cited below.) Here, it could be argued that there is investment risk because the purchaser must track the insured and pay additional premiums, and if the insured outlives the expected life expectancy projection used in pricing the policy, the investment return will decline.
    The United States Supreme Court has found that variable-rate annuities are securities for purposes of the 1933 Act (Securities Exchange Commission v. Variable Life Insurance Co., 359 U.S. 65 [1959]). Although the Supreme Court has not decided whether a variable annuity or a life insurance policy with a variable annuity feature is a security under the 1933 Act, in light of its finding in Variable Lift Insurance, supra, it is probable that the Court would find it to be one.
    Nevertheless, the sale may still be exempt from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act as an exempt transaction under Section 4 of the 1933 Act.

Section 4–Exempted Transactions
    The provisions of section 5 [registration] shall not apply to–
    2. transactions by an issuer not involving any public offering.
    6. transactions involving offers or sales by an issuer solely to one or more accredited investors, if the aggregate offering price of an issue of securities offered in reliance on this paragraph does not exceed the amount allowed under section 3(b), if there is no advertising or public solicitation in connection with the transaction by the issuer or anyone acting on the issuer’s behalf, and if the issuer files such notice with the Commission as the Commission shall prescribe.
    For either of these two exceptions to the registration requirements under Section 5 of the 1933 Act to apply, it must be concluded that a life settlement company is an “issuer” for purposes of this analysis.
    Section 2.4 of the 1933 Act defines “issuer” as “every person who issues or proposes to issue any security…”
    In many respects, the typical life settlement transaction involves much more than simply the sale of the underlying life insurance policy. More often than not, the issues for the security to the “passive” investor includes not only the cost of the underlying life insurance policy paid to the seller but also commissions and other remuneration and reimbursements for those involved in reviewing, pricing and structuring the transaction; several years of annual premiums; tracking and administration fees for payments of annual premiums and filing death benefit claims; and other related charges. In other words, the “security” represents the totality of the arrangement which includes pre-sale and post-sale activities that are bundled with the sale of the life insurance policy.
    In the absence of clear case law, it may be argued that a court, when presented with all of the facts and circumstances, would conclude, by virtue of the sales contract as the investment contract and all of the activities of a life settlement company in performing medical due diligence, reviewing the life insurance policy, conducting the actuarial/life expectancy analysis, negotiating pricing with the life settlement broker, etc., that such life settlement company would be an “issuer,” even though it may not take title to and then transfer the policy to the investor.
    Assuming that a life settlement company is the issuer, then, so long as there is no advertising or public solicitation in connection with the transaction by the issuer or anyone acting on the issuer’s behalf, the “investor” is sophisticated, is provided all of the information that it requests, and represents that it is acquiring the policy for investment purposes only and not with a view to a resale of all or any part thereof, then the sale to the investor would be an exempt transaction, and the registration requirements of Section 5 of the 1933 Securities Act would not apply.
    Regulation ED promulgated by the Securities Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) under the 1933 Act provides a “safe harbor” for the private offering exemptions. A life settlement company may consider compliance with Rule 506 of that regulation, which, among other things, requires (assuming a life settlement company does not want to prepare and deliver a prospectus-like disclosure document to interested investors) that the investor be “accredited” (which relates principally to the amount of an individual’s net worth or income, among other things), is sophisticated and able to bear the financial risk associated with the investment, is provided with access to the information relevant to the investment, and acknowledges in writing the investor’s investment intent.
    In Life Partners, the defendants argued that, in the alternative, if the court concluded that the Life Partners’ programs did involve the sales of securities, the programs could be modified to come within the safe harbor provided by Rule 506. Because the court concluded that the Life Partners programs did not constitute securities subject to the federal securities laws, it expressly did not reach that alternative argument.

APPLICATION OF THE ANTI-FRAUD PROVISIONS UNDER THE 1934 ACT
    Even if the 1933 Act registration requirements do not apply, that does not free a life settlement company from exposure to potential anti-fraud liability under the 1934 Act in connection with the purchase or sale of a security. This is where the defendants in Mutual Benefits ran into trouble.

Rule 10b-5–Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Devices
    It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange,
    a. To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,
    b. To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, or
    c. To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person,
    in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.
    There is no safety net, no safe harbor provision for avoidance of potential Rule 10b-5 liability. Consequently a life settlement company should provide complete disclosure and candor with respect to the investment opportunity that would include all of the risk factors attendant with the investment, background information on the life settlement company and its principals, detailed information on post-sale responsibilities of the investor (tracking, payment of premiums, etc.) if any, fees payable to the life settlement company and others associated with the transaction, etc., and complete access by the investors to information about the life settlement company, the policy and access to the management of the life settlement company for questions about the program.

APPLICATION OF BROKER DEALER REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS UNDER SECTION 15 OF THE 1934 ACT
    The third question is whether a life settlement company might trigger any of the broker-dealer registration requirements under federal or state statutes.
    The short answer is yes, and it does not matter that the life settlement company is also the “issuer.” It can be both the issuer and the broker in the transaction, as odd as that may sound.
    Who is a “broker” from the perspective of the SEC?
    Section 3(a)(4)(A) of the 1934 Act defines a “broker” broadly as:

any person engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities for the account of others.

    A person who executes transactions for others on a securities exchange clearly is a broker; that’s an easy one, but other examples may not be so clear cut.
    Investment advisers and financial consultants may qualify; certainly persons who market or effect transactions in insurance products that are securities, such as variable annuities, or other investment products that are securities, are required to register; and persons who effect securities transactions for the account of others for a fee, even when those other people are friends or family members, are also required to register.
    In order to determine whether any of these individuals (or any other person or business) is a broker, the SEC looks at the activities that the person or business actually performs.
    Does the person participate in important parts of a securities transaction, including solicitation, negotiation, or execution of the transaction?
    Does the person’s compensation for participation in the transaction depend upon, or is it related to, the outcome or size of the transaction?
    A “yes” answer to any of those questions indicates that a person may need to register as a broker with the SEC and obtain the appropriate license from the National Association of Securities Dealers (”NASD”).
    This is what the NASD may have intended when it issued, in August 2006, a Notice to Members (Notice to Members 06-38) addressing “Member Obligations with Respect to the Sale of Existing Variable Life Insurance Policies to Third Parties” and concluded:

“[E]ntities participating in the sale and marketing of interests in life insurance policies, variable or not, for investment purposes may trigger broker-dealer registration requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.”

APPLICATION OF STATE SECURITY LAWS
    As mentioned above, many states amended their security laws after the Life Partners case specifically to include investments in life settlement transactions within the definition of a security for state blue sky law purposes. This article does not generally address the issue of whether the sale of an in-force life insurance policy is a sale of a security for state law purposes, including, especially, those states that have amended their definition of security to include a life settlement contract. See, e.g., OCGA §10-5-2(a)(26).
    However, under Section 18 of the 1933 Act, if a security is a “covered security” that, generally speaking, is an exempt security under Section 3 or is sold in an exempt transaction under Section 4 of the 1933 Act, a state may not require registration of that security under the state registration requirements. That means if a life settlement company carries out an investment transaction as a Section 4(2) issuer transaction or one under the safe harbor of Rule 506 of Regulation D, as described above, no state may lawfully require such life settlement company, as the issuer, to file any pre-sale report or registration documentation. However, that does not exempt the transaction or the life settlement company from the state anti-fraud provisions or the state broker-dealer/salesman registration/licensing requirements.

CONCLUSION
    In summary, the sale of the entire interest in an in-force life insurance policy to a passive investor may very well involve the sale of a security. The sale can be structured so that it is exempt from the registration requirements of state and federal law. However, the state and federal anti-fraud provisions will apply to the transaction, and any person effecting the sale, particularly if compensated on the basis of the size of a successful sale, might be required to register with the SEC (and the applicable state) as a broker-dealer and be licensed as a security salesperson by the NASD.

Temporary life insurance, also known as term life, is a no-frills way of insuring yourself for a specific period of time—for example, one, five, or ten years. When the temporary life insurance can be automatically renewed every year at increasing rates, it is called annual renewable term (ART) insurance; when the premiums are constant for a longer term, it is referred to as level premium term insurance. In the latter case, as I explained earlier, your monthly premiums are guaranteed for the term of the insurance, and the insurance coverage ends at the end of the term.

The important characteristics of a term policy are its temporary nature and its lack of a savings component. This might seem an odd comment at first, since insurance should have nothing to do with savings. But you will see in a moment that permanent life insurance does have a savings component.
Temporary coverage, of course, is great for temporary needs. For example, it may be advisable for young couples, with considerable human capital to protect, who have just purchased a house and financed it with a large mortgage, have dependents, and so forth. They may have term life insurance of perhaps 8–10 times their annual salaries. Some financial advisors believe that, as these individuals age, this factor can be reduced to 6–8 times their annual salaries, and then perhaps even to 4–6 times—but never less. Of course, renewing the term insurance will cost more as you age because the probability of dying increases. In fact, in order to ensure they can continue to buy temporary coverage at all, some purchase term insurance with a guaranteed renewable clause. This means that, even if their health deteriorates, when the original period is over they can purchase a replacement policy (for the same or lower amount of coverage) without having to undergo a medical examination, which the insurance company usually requires in order to reduce adverse selection.

So much for temporary insurance coverage. What is permanent coverage? This type of coverage is usually referred to as whole life, universal life, or level life insurance. There are various types and flavors of permanent coverage, but the main idea is that your monthly or quarterly insurance premiums also contain a savings component. So, if you pay $100 per month, perhaps $60 goes toward the insurance premiums while the remaining $40 goes to a side savings fund and grows on a tax-deferred basis.

Why the savings? With (short) term insurance, the cost of buying a new policy would increase each year because the probability of dying increases as you age. Remember insurance is more expensive at older ages. In fact, by the time you are 80 the premiums are prohibitively expensive—assuming you can find a seller. Level or permanent insurance is a system whereby you overpay in the early years in order to subsidize the later years. Although the premiums are also fixed for a level life insurance policy (as its name suggests), level insurance premiums are higher than term premiums for the first part of your life whereas term premiums exceed level premiums later on. This is where the savings come in. Since you are overpaying in the early years, the excess over the pure premiums is being invested in a side fund. In fact, this tax-deferred savings component is what often gives rise to non–human capital reasons for purchasing insurance. For example, the tax shelter provides an efficient method of accumulating savings to finance the tax bill on your appreciated physical assets that your estate may face upon your death.
In some cases, you can actually control where those excess premiums are invested. For example, you may be able to choose to invest in insurance company mutual funds or bonds. As you age, some of the savings will be depleted to make up for the fact that your annual level premiums are lower than what they should be. With these so-called variable policies, you can withdraw (or cash in) the excess savings at any time, so you have access to an emergency fund in times of need.

In sum, were it not for income taxes and the possibility that your insurability might change over time, buying life insurance would be a simple decision. Everybody would be advised to “buy term and invest the difference.”

The second approach is the expense approach. As its name suggests, this method looks at the expenses that your family will incur over the course of their lives. You then buy insurance to cover those expenses rather than to replace your income. As you can imagine, there will be a wide variation between the amounts of insurance you think you need if you use the (family) expense method as opposed to the income approach. And the larger your income, the larger this gap will be.

Thus, for example, if you make $100,000 per year and expect this number to remain fairly constant in real terms (after inflation) for the rest of your life, then the income approach might lead to about $1,000,000 in life insurance coverage, which arguably could be the present (discounted) value of your wages at some interest rate. The expense approach would compute the costs of family living expenses, such as food and education, which might only be $500,000. In this case, any number between $500,000 and $1,000,000 would be acceptable as a life insurance policy.

This brings me to another important concept of insurance. Although the pricing of insurance is a rigorous and scientific discipline, determining the amount of insurance coverage that you require is not. Many people mistakenly believe that you can never have too much insurance. I disagree. I think that there is an upper bound (the income approach) and a lower bound (the expense approach), and anything in between is fair game. Further, regardless of whether you take the income or the expense approach, your insurance needs will change over time. Obviously, families’ expenses will decline substantially as their children grow up and leave the nest. Likewise, the discounted value of wages and other income will decline with time. So there is really no justification for buying more and more life insurance as you age.

I therefore find it quite puzzling that the size of one’s life insurance policy has become a status symbol in the corporate world. Executives in their 60s boast of life insurance policies worth $10 million to which their spouses and/or beneficiaries would be entitled. This strikes me as a waste of insurance premiums—and Iwould advise sleeping with one eye open! They may be very important and knowledgeable executives with lifelong experience and wisdom, but the present value of their salaries is nowhere near $10 million and the present value of their families’ expenses is even lower. In the absence of other (non–human capital) reasons, to which I shall return momentarily, there is no need to have more life insurance as you age.

Insurance is not a good investment on a pre-tax basis because the expected discounted value of the benefits you receive is lower than the premiums you pay; otherwise the insurance company would never make a profit. Yet it is a good hedge because the uncertainty in the insurance payout is negatively correlated with your human capital.

The term of the insurance policy is the amount of time during which the coverage is in effect. For example, if you purchase a 10-year term insurance policy then you will pay premiums (each month) for 10 years, and if you die anytime during the 10 years your beneficiary will receive $100,000. If you die one instant after the ten years are over, they get nothing. The only insurance that truly covers you for life is “term-to-100,” which covers you to age100. Although this type of insurance is not available in the United States, the “no-lapse universal life” policy can serve as an alternative.

For any given term, a male of any age must pay a higher monthly premium than a female for the same coverage. Of course, the differences in mortality account for this observation. Next, both males and females (of any age) pay more for 30 years of coverage than they would pay for 20- or 10-year term life insurance. However, what may appear counterintuitive is that a 5-year policy is actually more expensive than a 10-year and sometimes even a 20-year policy. This irregularity is likely due to a combination of several factors. First, the lack of insurer competition may be resulting in higher premiums for 5-year policies, since consumers tend to be more interested in longer-term insurance. Second, the insurer may be trying to amortize all of the costs associated with offering this policy over a shorter period of time.

When it comes to affordable life insurance, it is important to take a number of factors into consideration. As an example, take into consideration the number of people who currently depend on you for financial support and what those needs may be in times to come. If you have children, you most certainly will want to ensure that your affordable life insurance policy allows for moneys to meet college expenses, in the event you are not around to take care of them.

At the same time, it is a good idea to see how affordable life insurance fits into your overall financial picture. If you have already provided ample funds for future needs, such as college tuition and living expenses, or perhaps established trust funds for your children, that will greatly change the amount of life insurance you need to purchase.

One other factor, often overlooked as we plan for the well being of our loved ones after we die, is taxes. Depending on the structure of tax laws in your state, your survivors could find themselves with a heft tax bill, as your assets pass down to them. An affordable lie insurance policy can come into play and take the sting out of any of those applicable taxes.

It is relatively easy to get affordable life insurance, regardless of your age or circumstances. Your options for affordable life insurance include a variety of types of coverage, from universal life to different types of term life insurance. Of course, the best time to purchase affordable life insurance is when you are a young adult. Nevertheless, a person in his or her forties and beyond still can find some very attractive and affordable life insurance packages, especially term life policies.

When looking for affordable life insurance packages, make sure you check with agents in your town and also with your state insurance department. Many states will provide you with information about the ratings of insurance companies that are licensed to operate in your state. This information will help you to weed out any companies that may not meet your requirements. By checking with local agencies about the various affordable life insurance policies they have available, you can begin to get a feel for the way a policy is put together. You can also get a cross section of premiums involved with various types of affordable life insurance policies, and an idea which companies will do more for you in the years to come than merely selling you a policy.

Do not neglect the Internet as a great place to get more ideas about affordable life insurance. Online resources allow you to network with other people who already have experience with the type of policy and the company you have in mind. You can get a look at affordable life insurance options from the perspective of the consumer as well as the agent. Depending on what type of affordable life insurance policy you are considering, you may be able to find websites that will create a table showing several different companies to consider, with key information arranged in a table that makes comparisons easy to accomplish. Make sure you utilize the Internet before you sign any affordable life insurance policy with any agent.

Choosing affordable life insurance is an important way you take care of those you love. By understanding the needs of your loved ones, taking into consideration your overall financial profile, and allowing for your family’s future goals, you can find the perfect affordable life insurance package for your situation

LIFE ( Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education) has created a website – http://www.life-line.org/.  The website provides basic information and helps consumer find the best coverage without any pressure to buy. 

Benefits of a Term Life Policy

1. It’s straightforward. If you die during the term of your policy your beneficiaries get paid-that’s all there is to it.

2. It’s inexpensive. You aren’t paying anything extra to fund a savings account or cover investment fees.

3. You pay only for what you need when you need it. You typically need life insurance coverage for a specific period of time (until the kids are out of college, for instance).

Benefits of a Permanent Life Insurance Policy

1. Flexibility. A permanent plan can give you access to some or all of the premiums that you have been paying for at some future point.

2. It’s with you until you die. This type of policy coverage is guaranteed for your life with no out of the blue payment increases. A term policy will expire at a certain date, and a renewed policy could have much higher premiums.

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