If you are like most people, you buy your life insurance and forget about it. You make your scheduled payments, you file your statements away, and that’s it. However, it is in your best interest to review your policy periodically.
Anytime you have a legal change in your life you need to update your policy to ensure it passes to your beneficiaries if need be, or you have access to its value when you need it. If you marry or divorce, you need to update your policy. If you have a child, you should at least review the policy to make sure your preferences are covered.
If you experience a death in your family, review your policy to ensure that the deceased is not a beneficiary. For instance, your wife is the primary beneficiary of your policy but you have one or more of your children listed as secondary beneficiaries, and she passes before you. The policy will not automatically carry over to your children upon your death. They were secondary’s only if you and your wife passed at the same time (like the result of an accident). Your policy must be updated with the removal of your deceased beneficiary and new beneficiaries clearly spelled out.
If you have whole life of universal life insurance coverage, there is an investment element to your policy. You may have had the policy for a number of years and your living circumstances have changed. Statistically nearly, 50% of whole life policies are surrendered within 10 years. Maybe you are getting ready to retire, or you need to cover some unexpected expenses. It is a good to look at the value of your policy. You have two possible options; one to take a loan against the policy, the other is to cash it out. You will need to assess the surrender value and the cash value. The surrender value is the cash value of the policy minus any fees taken at the time of cashing in the policy (surrendering). Look to see if you have the option of taking a loan out against the policy instead of surrendering it.
It is not a bad idea when things have changed in your life to get new life insurance quotes to compare with what you have, make sure you are adequately covered and know your premiums are in line with the proper costs. Use our site to help you get quotes form reputable insurers in your area.
Reviewing your present policy and new life insurance quotes to save
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