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Summer is here, and it's the perfect time for family vacations, barbeques and outdoor activities. All that fun in the sun makes you realize how much your family means to you, and how precious your time together is.
Summer comes bang in the middle of the year making it an ideal time for a life insurance check-up. You can review all the events that have unfolded in your life during the past six months, and take a safe guess on what your needs might be in the next six months. This is the perfect time to review your life insurance purchase and make sure your family is adequately insured.
Why review your life insurance purchase?
You may say that you have already done a comprehensive review of your life insurance needs when you purchased your insurance policy. You went over your family's financial needs, took inflation into consideration and decided on a term. However, life's events keep unfolding - weddings, births, divorces, new jobs, new roles, variations in salaries, etc. are important life changing events that necessarily need to be reflected in your life policy. Many of these life events prompt the need for more life insurance coverage, while others may necessitate policy owners to decrease their death benefits. Life insurance should therefore never be the type of purchase that you forget about and neglect to review.
How best to review your life insurance needs
Reviewing your life insurance is not as formidable a task as it sounds. All you need to do is analyze these points, and you will be done!
How much is the policy amount? Analyze the figure, and see if there have been life-changing events such as a new baby, a marriage, a home purchase, etc. since the time you purchased the policy. Such events increase your insurance needs so you have to see if your policy amount is enough. Then, there are cases where your policy needs might have reduced from the time you purchased your policy. If your financial obligations have decreased (e.g., have your kids completed college and moved out of your home, or have you completed the last payment on your mortgage?) since then, then you probably have more life insurance than you really need.
Analyze the term. Is it long enough to allow you to fulfill all your obligations? Are there chances of incomplete financial obligations when your term ends? If your obligations have increased since you took out your policy, then you may have to consider increasing the term.
Is the type of life insurance policy you own best suited for your needs? This translates to a situation where you may actually need term, but your current policy is a permanent one, or vice versa. How will you know? Term is meant for those families who are looking for basic life policy. Such families may have financial obligations they need to fulfill, and a life insurance policy is meant to take care of these obligations in the event of the insured's death. On the other hand if you need life insurance mainly for the sake of estate planning or tax planning benefits, then a permanent life may be more suitable. If you feel that your policy is not aligned with your needs, you need to think about buying one that is.
How much of premium are you paying? If you bought your policy a while back, chances are that your premiums are costing you more than they should. Term life premiums have fallen considerably in the last few years. How will you know? Get online and visit a reputed life insurance quote provider website. Enter the information requested in the quote request form as accurately as possible. You will receive quotes for policies that best match your requirements. This is a great way to see if buying a new policy will actually work out cheaper for you.
Take appropriate action
The next step is to take action. If you find that you need to change your policy or the policy type, decrease or increase coverage, reduce or increase the term, then take the necessary steps to achieve this. Head online for the best deals in life insurance from reputed life insurance carriers. Remember never to cancel out an old policy until the new one is in force.
An annual summer checkup of your life insurance needs puts you on the right track, and lets you enjoy the rest of the year knowing that your family will be adequately provided for, come what may!
