Just bought life insurance

Jkust

Original poster
Member
Dec 4, 2011
946
Finally broke down and bought a large policy on myself. Have always had a decent amount through work but it was time to grow up and pay the piper so to speak. Not thrilled about the monthly extra expense but it is what it is.
 

The_Roadie

Lifetime VIP Donor
Member
Nov 19, 2011
9,957
Portland, OR
Since work insurance can disappear at any time, you know you need something more portable to replace part of yourself if you're not there for your loved ones.

The other HUGE benefit of being insured is to preserve your insurability in the future. I recommend the sort of insurance that allows you to add amounts at certain future events like when you have kids, in case you also get some dread disease that makes you uninsurable. Nowadays, even talking to a counselor about job loss depression can make you uninsurable even if you don't have cancer.

Disability insurance is also something to look into.
 

Ghoster

Lifetime VIP Donor
Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,444
Its always a good idea.... so who is the beneficiary??? Can you have them give me a call??:biggrin:
 

Jkust

Original poster
Member
Dec 4, 2011
946
the roadie said:
Since work insurance can disappear at any time, you know you need something more portable to replace part of yourself if you're not there for your loved ones.

The other HUGE benefit of being insured is to preserve your insurability in the future. I recommend the sort of insurance that allows you to add amounts at certain future events like when you have kids, in case you also get some dread disease that makes you uninsurable. Nowadays, even talking to a counselor about job loss depression can make you uninsurable even if you don't have cancer.

Disability insurance is also something to look into.

Thanks roadie. You are right on that. I have substantial disability insurance throught work as well. They really upped it this year for the first time but again as you said, work can disappear. In the process of getting $1M, 20 year term on my wife as well now. I qualified for the 'premier' rate which applies to 1 in 15 people but still not cheap. The 20 year term versus the 10 year really bumped the price up.
 

Blade

Member
Nov 20, 2011
257
Very good choice. As soon as you have a family you need to make sure that they have a chance if you are not there to continue to care for them. My wife has been in the industry for 30 years doing policy services. She has seen so many policies paid out to families that may have been sent to the poor house if it had not been for the insurance.

My wife has always had me insured. Now she said I could buy this motorcycle and ... Hey wait a minute! :eek:
 

Badbart

Member
Nov 20, 2011
633
Blade said:
Very good choice. As soon as you have a family you need to make sure that they have a chance if you are not there to continue to care for them. My wife has been in the industry for 30 years doing policy services. She has seen so many policies paid out to families that may have been sent to the poor house if it had not been for the insurance.

My wife has always had me insured. Now she said I could buy this motorcycle and ... Hey wait a minute! :eek:

Did she offer to let you go skydiving, or bungie jumping too? That's a clue!:rotfl:
 

Jkust

Original poster
Member
Dec 4, 2011
946
Blade said:
Very good choice. As soon as you have a family you need to make sure that they have a chance if you are not there to continue to care for them. My wife has been in the industry for 30 years doing policy services. She has seen so many policies paid out to families that may have been sent to the poor house if it had not been for the insurance.

My wife has always had me insured. Now she said I could buy this motorcycle and ... Hey wait a minute! :eek:

Thanks, I have been way delinquent in this. So much easier to ignore it until it's too late. I travel for work a good bit, flying on planes, in NY and other cities alot and there is a lot of room for stuff to happen. I'm thinking of getting rid of the Onstar service to offset about 40% of the life insurance cost. The other thing is I'll be 40 in a couple years and locked in what apparently is a good rate??
 

HARDTRAILZ

Moderator
Nov 18, 2011
49,665
I am lucky and have a policy paid for by my father plus work related and a bit of personal. Figure I may need to add more, but am decently covered for now.
 

Jkust

Original poster
Member
Dec 4, 2011
946
HARDTRAILZ said:
I am lucky and have a policy paid for by my father plus work related and a bit of personal. Figure I may need to add more, but am decently covered for now.

Good for you. This is what I was hearing all over and I had some insurance through work but not enough given the ages of the kids. In reality we are more likely to be disabled than killed and the STD/LTD is important as well then. The big waste of insurance dollars this year is the insurance for my two snowmobiles and trailer. $70 per month for the winter months and I don't see them getting any use this year. The sleds are stored inside and only the trailer is at risk of theft or damage and there is no liability risk given they are parked. Wondering if I should stop that insurance too and only keep it on the trailer for theft. That's $100/ month for onstar and snowmobile insurance.
 

Hatchet

Member
Nov 21, 2011
2,405
yea i need to get one as well as a will going now that i own a house...

but insurance is 1 of 2 things i just can never seem to wrap my head around... you can give me something and i can take it apart and put it back together again. but insurance i just cant seem to grasp.
 

navigator

Member
Dec 3, 2011
504
Hatchet said:
yea i need to get one as well as a will going now that i own a house...

but insurance is 1 of 2 things i just can never seem to wrap my head around... you can give me something and i can take it apart and put it back together again. but insurance i just cant seem to grasp.

Assuming there is you, a wife and 2 kids, think about your wife's situation if you were to die.
Assuming your wife works, she likely doesn't make more than 1/2 the household income.
If you are like most families it takes most of what the 2 of you make to survive.
Cut that in half.
Without insurance your wife loses the house and they move in with family until they can find something else and likely her credit is hosed up for a few years. She will likely have to struggle just to feed the kids and they will likely have a hard time affording college. Since they can't afford college and get good jobs they have to take what they can get and possibly turn to substance abuse which begins a downward spiral for their future generations.

Much of this could have been avoided if you had decent life insurance.....
At least have enough to pay off your home and any other debts you might have and start a little college fund.

Dang, I need to go increase my coverage!
 

Blade

Member
Nov 20, 2011
257
One thing my wife reminded me of is that some group or "work" policies have a conversion clause if you leave the company for any reason. Always worth asking about if you want to pay to continue coverage. This is usually only valid as "term" insurance policies that do not accrue any cash value or dividends.

Oh ya ... and don't tell them that you plan on buying a motorcycle in the near future. Smoking, overweight, and more risky activities/sports get you "rated" :banghead:

(and she did offer to pack my parachute:undecided:)
 

Jkust

Original poster
Member
Dec 4, 2011
946
Blade said:
One thing my wife reminded me of is that some group or "work" policies have a conversion clause if you leave the company for any reason. Always worth asking about if you want to pay to continue coverage. This is usually only valid as "term" insurance policies that do not accrue any cash value or dividends.

Oh ya ... and don't tell them that you plan on buying a motorcycle in the near future. Smoking, overweight, and more risky activities/sports get you "rated" :banghead:

(and she did offer to pack my parachute:undecided:)

Yes good point. The issue there though is that the life insurance through your work is only up to a certain amount like say you can only get $200,000 max which isn't enough for much. By the way your health insurance through work has the same feature. After you quit or are fired or whatever, you go on COBRA then after that runs out, you can get an individual conversion policy mostly through a company called Celtic.
As for term insurance, it is cheap compared to whole life or other types of coverage that offer a savings feature.

As for the motorcycle and health issues, A Phlebotomists comes out and takes multiple viles of blood, Urine and tests your blood pressure, height, weight and vitals. The insurance company then tests your blood for a ton of things then they research you through a company called MIB which is used for individual insurance. In othor words even if you misrepresent the answers to any the questions they ask, they have a good chance of finding the truth through your medical and prescription records. They asked me about scuba diving, sky diving, international travel, flying in a private plane and a bunch of others but I don't recall them asking about mortorcycles.
 

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