It depends on numerous factors, here are some simple general guidelines:

30X income for people under 30
10X income for people under 40
5X income for people under 60
after that it largely depends on net worth and such.

Income would be the most significant factor and also they take into consideration liabilities, or need for the coverage.

Rick Perry, is, or at least was under fire for being involved in a life insurance scheme that involved ‘betting’ or investing the mortality of teachers throughout the state of Texas.  A lot of people and publications, including the Huffington Post, are treating this as though it’s a significant scandal, but frankly I’m not convinced he has done much of anything wrong.  STOLI, or stranger owned life insurance, is a questionable and often fraudulent concept whereby an investor wants you to purchase life insurance so they can later take ownership of it and use your policy as an investment vehicle, but in this scenario the teachers were already insured anyway.  Life settlements if used in a transparent fashion are often beneficial to the client but of course frowned upon by life insurance carriers for various reasons.

Personally, and not to get political, I don’t like Rick Perry, but I think describing this as a “life insurance scheme” makes it sound worse than it is.  It seems like ol’ Rick was just trying to find a creative way to help the state of Texas by using Wall Street ingenuity.  Life settlements aren’t really all that bad.  The argument against them usually centers around the idea that if you die someone benefits so therefore they are bad in that somewhat is profiting from your death.

Here is thought for you, health insurance companies benefit when you die young.  The government benefits when you die young and in many cases so does your family.  Profiting from something that is bad isn’t wrong so long as you aren’t causing it.  Take me for instance.  To some degree I profit from people’s fear of death. Does that make me a bad person?  I don’t profit from the problem but moreso the solution.  I provide life insurance which makes the inevitable financial issue of an untimely death more tolerable in the long term.

I’m far from an expert on the Rick Perry life insurance scheme, but I believe it’s likely a lot of hype over what is essentially nothing more than a financial transaction which Rick Perry should have made more clear to the teacher’s union.

I found the life insurance commercial shown below through Digg.  It’s incredibly well made for a commercial and although it is far more dramatic than virtually any commercial ever shown on American television, personally I think it’s far more insightful and noteworthy than the unbelievably annoying State Farm commercials or the overly sentimental commercials for Allstate auto insurance.  A lot of the people who have commented on this life insurance commercial seem to be offended by it, or find it incredibly depressing. Personally I think utilizing hacky “discount double check” commercials, and selling life insurance at painfully uncompetitive rates is far more offensive to consumers. 

This Thai life insurance commercial really caught my eye because I actually envisioned a very similar commercial where a car crash is shown in dramatic slow motion and jump cuts are used to show the person who is seconds from dying in other parts of their life.  The one thing that is a bit illogical about this video is that it doesn’t really focus on any need for life insurance.  The person seems to be wanting “more time” and remembering their regrets which is obviously something that owning life insurance won’t help with, nor will having it make you not regret the bad decisions you’ve made.

Regardless of how you feel about the commercial, it seems like Thai Life is an extremely successful company and is growing rapidly in a developing country where the need for life insurance is likely soaring along with the economic conditions of the country.  I can’t speak of Thai Life on any critical level as I know nothing of Thailand’s life insurance marketplace, but this company does make some excellent commercials which all seem to be on YouTube.  I envy their ability to get people to voluntarily watch their commercials and brand themselves so successfully.

Watch the life insurance commercial above and judge for yourself.

New York Life Insurance has a page within their website that declares their website does not provide online life insurance quotes and they say this as though it is a sign of superiority.  Apparently in the year 2012 not providing precise and user friendly information about your product online is a virtue according to New York Life.  They then point out that they have something even better and that is agents.  They claim this is better because in the event of service needs, such as changing beneficiaries or reviewing coverage later you will want an agent.  One of the other reasons New York Life Insurance claims using them is better than an online life insurance quote service is that “life insurance is not a commodity”.  Although I agree with this statement, it’s clear they are ignoring the fact that websites like mine are operated by an agent and aren’t simply automated portals.

The claim that New York Life is better than buying life insurance via a website because New York Life provides an agent is debunked by my service actually having an agent.  Not only does this website have an insurance agent of it’s own, but that agent doesn’t necessitate using your home as a place to sell the coverage and can shop various companies instead of simply believing New York Life is the best option.

“Life insurance is not a commodity”.  This is a true statement and a statement I have made many times.  The irony of New York Life making this statement is that they treat life insurance like more of a commodity than services like mine do.  I actually compare multiple options from competing companies as opposed to pretending that New York Life is competitive for term life insurance, which they aren’t, or that there aren’t better options for permanent coverage, which there are.

New York Life Insurance capitalizes on a name.  This name is incredibly well known and it’s the fuel for their continued success.  I capitalize on the ability for the Internet to make researching and purchasing life insurance policies much easier.  Many of the requests are sent to me in the middle of the night or on the weekend.  New York Life may not see a reason to have an online life insurance quote system, but the people who use my website certainly do.

After the recent economic meltdown, a large number of children are in poverty and without health insurance. But over the past couple of years, number of children without health insurance has dropped by 1 million. Many states in the U.S. have expanded the eligibility criteria for insurance so that children can afford to get their health insurance. This has shrunken the number of uninsured children from 6.9 million in 2009 to 5.9 million in 2010. According to the experts of Affordable Care Act, the federal health care reform has played an important role in the improvement.

Overall, 34 states experienced a significant decrease in the rate of uninsured children. Among them, Florida stands first, dropping from 667,758 to 506,934. But on the other hand, unfortunately Minnesota, Kansas and Wisconsin had an increase in the number of uninsured children. While Nevada had the highest rate of uninsured children, Massachusetts had the lowest.

These data have been provided by the Census Bureau on the basis of the analysis of new health insurance data. It was done by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families.

The main reason behind the incessant growth of uninsured children is the recent economic turmoil and the increasing cost of private insurance. However, these days, families are turning to the federal-state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs, known as CHIP. Both these programs offer health insurance to children, especially to those who belong to the lower strata of the society. These programs come from different funding streams and allow states in how they run their programs.

Above all, President Barrack Obama signed an extension of CHIP and provided $87 billion to help people in the states to pay for Medicaid in the year 2009. Experts commented that a bipartisan national commitment has given states a new tool to follow. For instance, in early days, some states would require having face-to-face interview but now many states have online applications.

Ms. Joan Alker, co-executive director of the Georgetown University research center said that the Affordable Care Act must also preserve these gains going forward. She also said that we must preserve the culture of coverage. Everybody needs insurance and everybody has the right to be insured. All families must feel that an option is available for them too.

Florida led in reducing the number of uninsured children as so many programs had been introduced in favor of the masses. Legislation passed in 2009 further simplified the process, and penalties got reduced for them who are not being able to pay premiums.

South Carolina is trying its best to make it easier for low-income children to get coverage in Medicaid. The state’s Medicaid director is requesting an additional $35 million from the state to help around 70,000 children in getting health insurance coverage.

Texas also experienced a significant decrease in the total number of uninsured children. On the other hand, in Arizona, 258,339 uninsured children in 2008 dropped to 207,967 in 2010. But unfortunately, Minnesota saw the largest increase in uninsured children, from 72,493 in 2008 to 84,165 in 2010.

However, it is to be concluded by saying that states in the U.S. have by and large seen a significant decrease in the number of uninsured children.

Dave Ramsey “recommends” Zander insurance. It would be more fair to say he is a paid endorser of the service. If you were to visit the Zander Insurance website you would notice that Dave Ramsey is clearly shown on nearly every main page. I’ve already discussed in a prior post my issues with Dave Ramsey, so in my opinion it doesn’t really seem like he is the most credible or likely spokesperson for anything.

What is good and bad about Zander Insurance?

Let me start by saying that Zander Insurance is far better than State Farm or Allstate or any other franchised type of life insurance operation.  Their quote engine is instant which puts them into the top tier of life insurance services already.  The bad aspects of the site, it that it requires personal information to be entered, and completely rejects the idea that there is any value in any scenario for someone to have permanent life insurance.  This is obviously meant to be congruent to the constant and one dimensional advice given by Dave Ramsey himself.  It’s almost as though they were one of the only life insurance operations that was capable of purchasing Dave’s recommendation because they were willing to push the highly simplistic and somewhat ignorant view that permanent insurance is never beneficial.

Virtually every life insurance website has similar flaws that Zander Insurance does except for the somewhat contrived endorsement from a questionable “financial expert”.  There are only a few sites that do what mine does as quickly as it does.  At this point it seems Zander insurance may have become too entrenched with Ramsey’s name.  For one, being involved with his name prevents a life insurance agency from being able to do any type of estate planning or even providing the best option for those using life insurance as protection of their pensions.  Secondly, now that they have beat their chest so often that Dave Ramsey the endorsement associated with them it has lost most of it’s value and objectivity. 

Zander Insurance is a decent life insurance website, but I can objectively say that YourLifeSolution.com is simply better.  It’s clean and to the point.  I don’t feel the need to shove the ‘buy term invest the difference’ mantra down the user’s throat as I believe people can understand this concept for themselves.  My site is also superior simply because it quotes more companies and provides more information about underwriting than Zander Insurance’s website does or likely ever will.

Dave Ramsey is a somewhat well known financial pundit who preaches a lot of things I agree with.  He believes Americans are too dependent on credit cards and aren’t all that responsible when it comes to how they use money in general.  Dave Ramsey is also known to have some very strong opinions regarding life insurance, of which I agree to a point but feel he resorts to ad hominem.  He claims that all life insurance which isn’t term is “garbage”.  He did in fact use the word “garbage” which seems like an incredible exaggeration when you look at the difference between the most competitive universal life policy and the most competitive thirty year term policy within the same underwriting scenario.  In the video shown below he clearly states that with permanent insurance you only receive 5% of the benefit per dollar.  This can proven wrong with my life insurance quote engine located on nearly every page of my website.  Using some simple math and research, I can say that this statement from Dave Ramsey is empirically false. 

Proving Dave Ramsey Wrong with Math

The difference in price for an exceptionally healthy forty-year old man to purchase a thirty year term policy or a universal life policy with a fixed price until age 121 is about four fold on a $1,000,000 death benefit.  So the term coverage death benefit comes at a price of about 25 cents on the dollar when compared to the permanent policy.  While this does make a decent argument for term coverage, it certainly makes you wonder where Dave Ramsey’s fact checkers are, since as I stated earlier he claimed it was 5 cents on the dollar.  He also acts like the price is an apples-to-apples comparison.  Yes, the universal policy is more expensive, but if the hypothetical 40 year-old in this scenario were perfectly healthy and tried to buy that same universal life policy at the age of 70, he wouldn’t be able to purchase it for less than $25,000 per year (based on current underwriting and cost analysis).  This means it will cost almost as much per year to start a universal policy at seventy years-old than it was to own the term policy for an entire thirty years, but if the policy had been universal life from day one, it would be roughly 1/5 the price to maintain it. What if the insured wanted to maintain coverage until 80 due to having long term agricultural loans or just wanted the coverage to pay estate taxes?  Once you acknowledge this you start to see the over simplicity of Dave Ramsey’s knee jerk argument.

What’s Right about Dave Ramsey’s Life Insurance Argument

Buy term and invest the difference is not a bad philosophy.  If you are a middle class family who simply wants to cover a temporary liability, such as a mortgage or children, then it makes perfect sense to opt for the cheaper and simpler term coverage to protect you today.  Dave Ramsey would be completely objective in saying that.  He is also correct in stating that there is a significant difference in cost between the two options and that many life insurance agents are simply bias towards believing permanent coverage is the answer due to their own benefit.  The problem here, as you can see in the video above where he vindicates the man who emailed him a question, was that he has such a one track mind.  It’s as if he doesn’t believe estate taxes or liabilites will exist if someone dies at the age of 90, or that no one wants to have the long term safety net of a permanent policy.  Hey Dave, I’m a licensed agent and I have a whole life policy, yet I don’t think it’s the right option for most people.  I am objective enough to understand that there is no one option for everyone.

A Clear Example Where Dave Ramsey is Wrong

Recently I placed a life insurance policy on a retired man in Michigan.  His wife wanted to purchase a permanent policy on him because she wanted a safety net to protect his pension.  The pension did have an option to purchase their pension coverage which would have continued providing her payments after her husband’s death, but it was actually cheaper to purchase a permanent insurance policy through me.  To put a term policy on this man in his 60′s would have cost over half as much and would not have provided much value if the man died after the age of 80.  Buying term and investing the difference doesn’t make much sense when you are in the wealth preservation stage of your life either.  This couple purchased a policy through my service and now have a guaranteed premium on their policy until the age of 105 and the ability to keep the coverage in force until the age of 121.  They know his pension is now protected, they saved money, and they couldn’t have accomplished the same goals with term coverage.  Here is a clear example where Dave Ramsey’s claim that term coverage is the right option 100% of the time is blatantly wrong.

Just for the record, nearly all the coverage purchased through YourLifeSolution.com is term life insurance.  This article is merely to point out the lack of intellect in Dave Ramsey’s statements, and to show that there are cases where permanent coverage is objectively a great option.

Much of the content on this site is written about dull subjects such as how life insurance rates are set and such.  Most of this content is written by firms whom I pay to create it for me as I’d rather pay them than write it myself.  My name is Eric Smith, and I’m authoring this post to explain in a complete fashion exactly why you should utilize YourLifeSolution.com for your life insurance needs.

First, let me explain what YourLifeSolution.com is not.  If you google the phrase life insurance you will find a significant number of completely spoofed and spammy sites that merely will resell your information, typically through the SureHits.com network on a pay-per-click basis.  Below this text is a screenshot of exactly what I am taking about.

Above boxed in red are blatent cloaked spammy sites utilized by many of my competitors

If you were to click on one of these sites you would see results like this:

 You will see this same template, sometimes with a different background color, regardless of which result you click on.  These sites are reported and flagged by Google on a regular basis and penalized away from ranking.  Unfortunately their are a massive number of these sites and they are a constant disturbance.  Websites like this need to be boycotted in lieu of quality sites that directly provide what they claim to provide.  I take pride in my brand and my website, and would never sell out my domain to this useless lead aggregation mechanism. 

This is why YourLifeSolution.com should be your source for life insurance. I provide life insurance quotes, I field underwrite and service the application and the policy is sent to you from me.  Your information will absolutely never be sold or traded.  Most of these websites bury fine print at the bottom to hide the fact that your information can be sold to entities, who in turn can resell it to more entities.  This is ridiculous and a dis-service to you the consumer.

Take one look at YourLifeSolution.com and you can tell your life insurance quote will be delivered without any nonsense and that only I, Eric Smith, with the phone number 888.374.2764, and the current address of 3926 N Kedvale, Chicago, IL will be your only contact via email and phone.

Use my service today because it’s the best for you and your family and forget paying more with the typical life insurance agent.

Whole life insurance rates are affected by gender, lifestyle, age and family history. Premiums are high but provide a lifelong financial support.

A whole life insurance policy is the only static password for a tension-free life; and if you are having a family that is dependant on you, you must provide them the required financial support. Besides, at a certain junction, everybody needs a life securing component that will serve as a financial basis. A whole life insurance is uniquely beneficial as it doesn’t expire in a confined period of time. It’s literally a lifetime policy and thus provides support till the person dies. Since running a life insurance for that long a period isn’t a cheap contract, one must know how whole life insurance rates are calculated. This will greatly help the individual to choose the right policy.

Premiums in this kind of life plan are fixed and no taxes are incurred for the periodical investments. There are a number of factor that determines the amount one may have to pay as premium and this will in turn help to calculate the whole life insurance rates. The sum of coverage largely depends on the age of the individual, health level, lifestyle and gender. But no matter when the beneficiary dies, he will certainly receive coverage for his entire life. If at any period of time the individual discontinues the premium, the company will pay the whole accumulated amount. Some people often just opt out of such lifelong policies because of high insurance rates. Now this is not necessary until you get to know the whole life insurance rates. In fact some companies might just offer a quote for free. [i]

In order to determine the whole life insurance rates of your policy, first make a list of the taxes that you are paying. Did you know that it’s actually these taxes that make the premium amount appear huge? Common taxes included are service tax, administrative tax, local tax, etc. You must also include the charges you pay to your accountant (if any), for looking after your financial section. The next step would be to understand when you are likely to die and what can be the causative factor. Consider your health condition, gender and age in this case. Remember that if you are old and without any chronic ailments your premium amount will be high. But for a man who is young but having the same physical condition will have a smaller premium. Likewise, the premium amount lessens if the beneficiary is a woman.

Whole life insurance rates are also influenced by the amount you want to be paid out at your death. This depends on how much financial support your family needs. If you want a large coverage, the monthly premium will naturally be high. Indirect components that affect whole life insurance rates are family health history, the insured individual’s health history and average expenditures taking place in the family. If there’s a family record of chronic ailments like cancer, diabetes, etc the premium amount will go up. Similarly the beneficiary should also understand how to take care of himself and avoid health risks.

Benefits of Fixed Term Life Insurance

If you are planning to go for fixed term life insurance it is advisable to first consider the advantages that this type of insurance has to offer in order to derive the best results. There are distinct advantages of fixed term life insurance which only those who have applied for it would be able to enjoy. The first advantage of this type of insurance is that it comes with lower premium rates which are available due to the fixed rate of such insurance. Since the fixed term feature of such life insurance lowers the risk that the insurance company has to bear, the policyholder in turn gets to enjoy lower premium rates.

Many find the fixed term life insurance beneficial for covering specific needs. As a result of this some people prefer to go for this form of policy for covering the time when the children are very young. On the other hand there are many people who get the fixed term life insurance in order to keep their house free from the risks of mortgage, if they face untimely death. The greatest advantage of the fixed term life insurance is the combination of lower premiums and benefit of limited coverage which it offers to the insurer.