All Life Insurance Tips - Can I get low cost life insurance?

Can I get low cost life insurance?

Hi. My ex hubby and I got divorced in 1997, but he always had an insurance policy on me from his job. Recently he got remarried and he told my son to tell me that he no longer has any life insurance on me. I am a female age 52, a little overweight, I have diabetes and hypertension. Also, I never smoked. What kind of life insurance can I get? Also, is term or whole life better? I know that term is cheaper. Please help... I don't want to burden my sons with this when I pass.

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You're 52, a little over weight, have diabetes and hypertension and you are asking about low cost life insurance and the better type, term or whole life. I would first like to know your need for the insurance and how long you will need the life insurance. If you say you need final (burial) expense then you have a small need for life insurance. You may want to pay off a mortgage or use the db proceeds to pay for college tuition for a child and both of those needs are far greater than a final expense need. With your present health conditions mentioned you will find most insurance companies less interested in offering you any rate other than Standard non-smoker, if you are lucky. The type of diabetes and the medicines taken for it combined with your hypertension and weight issue may place you on the outside of the premium curve, so be prepared for high rates. Again, you need to determine how long you'll need the life insurance to last which may be a minute after your heart stops beating which may require some form of whole life insurance - possibly Universal life. Don't expect to receive a low rate as your health seems to be against you. But, do expect to pay a higher premium than you expect. Term insurance may also equally be hard to obtain and an insurance company may refuse to write a policy for someone with your health status.
I've been in the financial service business for over 5 years and in my professional opinion, the only life insurance that everyone needs is term life insurance. I have term insurance and so do all my clients. I bought a 20 year term insurance at age 23 with $250,000 coverage with Waiver of Premium and pay about $20/month. If you don't know what Waiver of Premium is, its where in case you become disable for 6 months, the insurance company will pay the rest of your premiums and refund the premiums you paid during the first 6 months you were disabled. If you don't become disabled by age 60, the Waiver of Premium will cancel. I also have been investing $400/month into my Roth IRA in mutual funds. During the 37 years I invest from age 23 to age 60, I am expected to have anywhere between $1.1 million (with average return of 8%) to $3.3 million (with average return of 12%). In the past 30 years, the S&P 500 had an average return of 10.99%. The S&P 500 lists 500 large companies in the United States, many of which you are familiar with such as Coca Cola, 3M, AT&T, Verizon, Costco, Best Buy, Citigroup, Exxon, The Gap, Hewlitt-Packard, and so on. What is a mutual fund? In simple terms, there are a pool of investors such as me who invest their money through a portfolio manager. This portfolio manager will use these investments to buy stocks of different companies to meet the fund's objective. There can be as little as 25 companies or over 100 different companies in a mutual fund. With so many companies or stocks in a mutual fund, a mutual fund is considered to be diversified. Diversification leads to lower risk because your investment is spread over several companies. The great thing about having a mutual fund is that you don't have to worry about which stocks you should buy and when to sell. The portfolio manager takes care of all that for you. Most of my clients also invest their money. Between my clients and myself, I have approximately $1.5 million of assets under management. There is always a risk in investing, but with the education I provide to my clients, all those fears and concerns of the market goes away. Couple years ago, the US economy went into a recession and we are probably still in a recession. I got so many calls from my clients and asking me what to do. I ask them if they need the money right now? They all say no. I ask them do they remember me showing them the long term trend on how the market works? Some say yes and some forgot. Anyway, at the end, they all continue to invest because they realize it would be a bad idea to pull out of the market when value of their shares are so low. They also realize its very smart to invest in times when the economy is doing bad since they can buy more shares when price per share is low. The value of my account was down 26% in the beginning of January 2009. In the beginning of 2010, the value of my account was up 38%. Anyway, besides helping my clients get life insurance and invest their money, I also help them get out of debt. I don't think there's really any companies that is really tackling the debt issue except for one company and thats Primerica. As time goes on, the savings goes up and their debts and other financial obligations goes down. Eventually all their debts are paid off. At this point there are at or just few years away from retiring. With no debt and no kids to take care of and with high abundance of savings put away for retirement, there should be no needs for having life insurance. If there is, they don't need as much as they did when they were much younger. This is why I recommend everyone to get term insurance. Of course there would be people, especially life insurance agents, to tell you to get whole life or universal life and try to trick you on how great these products are. They will say things that it builds savings and it has guarantee interest and you can use it for whatever purpose. So do savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs at your bank, but the savings in a life insurance policy don't work the same way that banks do. In life insurance, the so-called savings is really called "cash value." If you wanted to take money out from the life insurance policy, you have to put it back and pay loan interest of 8%. If you took money from your bank account, do you have to put it back and pay interest on it? No. But in life insurance, you do. If you die someday, the insurance company pays the death benefit to your beneficiary, but they keep the cash value. So why pay for two things in cash value life insurance (the life insurance and the cash value), and not just the insurance like term insurance, which doesn't build cash value? Is it me or do you find it odd that only life insurance have cash value and all the other types of insurance such as car insurance or homeowner's insurance don't build cash value? So why should life insurance build cash value?
You don't qualify for term insurance. You likely need a graded benefit whole life plan. You could get about $25,000 for about $100/month. If you lose the weight then the diabetes could go away.
It's impossible to say which is better for you, without knowing what your GOAL is. Is the goal just to pay for a funeral? Or you want to leave six figures to your sons, even if they're in their 40's when you pass? The higher the coverage amount, and the longer you want to keep in in force, the more it costs.