| By :
Marilyn Katz
Do older people even need a life insurance policy any more? The truth is, many seniors can put a policy to very good use for their financial or estate planning. We have some positive news too. You can find lots of insurers who want to do business with the senior market! Are younger people the only people who need a life policy? We tend to think of younger people wanting to ensure the security of a growing family, a mortgage, or other things. People in their retirement years may still be able to use life insurance. One of the simplest uses is to pay for the high cost of funerals and associated expenses. Since this can cost $10,000 or more, it is a valid concern for many families with modest resources. Insurers have a product that is called burial insurance for this use. These are fairly small whole life inurance policies. They were designed to be easy to apply for and afford. They are very common, and you probably see them advertised on TV sometimes. They tend to call them senior life policies on TV. The transfer of wealth or an estate is another use for a policy. There are tax advantages to using life insurance for this reason. By paying premiums now, children or grand children may inherit the death benefit when the insured person passes awway. The best things is that there are usually no taxes do on the proceeds so this can really help. One other use of a policy may be to help avoid family disputes. Let us say that an elderly person really only owns a home as a large cash asset. If one child will inherit that house, then other children could be "bought out" with the proceeds from the policy. This can really help families get along if the distribution of assets will not be exactly the same. Consider another example. This could be a small business that the insured person owns. Let us say that Mr. Smith owns a bakery. He intends to leave this business to his one son who has learned the business. His daughter did not go into the business, but Mr. Smith wants to make sure he can leave her something too. So he decides to take out a policy to fairly compensate her because he is leaving his bakery to his son. So you can see that an older person may find good uses for life insurance. Before you start shopping for your own policy, it is important to think about the reasons you want one. When you do, it is much easier to find the right type and amount of insurance for you. How can you get more help? In the old days, it was tough to actually compare policies. For one thing, you had to set appointments with agents. This could take up a lot of time, and sometimes you would have to sit through a lot of sales calls. But these days, you can find many comparison quote forms online. The online forms only take moments to complete, and the payoff is you can save a lot of time and money.
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