There are three main types of life insurance that you'll want to look
into when you get ready to buy. These are Whole Life, Term Life and
Endowment.

A Whole life insurance policy will cover you for your "whole life"
as long as you maintain the premium payments. As you pay your premiums
part of the money goes toward purchasing insurance for you, while
the rest is placed into an interest bearing account.You can borrow
against your savings account as needed, but you must pay it back just
like any other loan.

Whole life policies mature at age 100 years. After this happens then
the insurance policy will be paid out at face value and cancelled.
Face value is the amount that the policy would have paid in the event
of the death of the insured person. An example would be - a $100,000.00
policy has a "face value" of $100,000.00.

An Endowment can be used to set up a policy for a certain amount of
time for a specific purpose. Endowment policies can be used for many
different reasons such as supplemental retirement nest eggs,
children's tuition for college and more.

Endowment insurance policies costs more in the short term in order
to pay the policy off in the specified period of time. Example, a 20
year endowment would be paid in full after 20 years.

Term life insurance is the cheapest insurance policy that you
can purchase. These policies can be bought for a designated "Term"
such as a "10 Year Term" or "20 Year Term". Term policies are similar
to Endowment policies, but, unlike Endowment and Whole Life, there is
no cash value built up with term insurance policies.

A Term policy would be good for an individual or family that needs
extra insurance coverage for a specific period of time.
A good example would be the family man or woman who was the primary
income source or "breadwinner" needing higher insurance during their
working years when they would normally have bigger obligations such
as house payments, car payments, kids college tuition savings and more.

Before buying any life insurance, you need to go through all of your
bills. After you get them all together you need to place them in different
piles. One for regular monthly household bills and a second for payments
that are financed such as credit cards, auto, home loan, ect. These are
things that will be paid off at some point.

You need to purchase enough insurance where all of these items can be
paid in full in the event that tragedy strikes your family.

The second pile will have only your normal monthly obligations. These
will include food, clothing, insurance (life, health, dental, auto,
homeowners, ect.) utilities, phone and more.

It can be a startling experience for some people when they actually
sit down with pen and paper and look at the amount of money it takes
to survive each month. These is considered "normal" expenses too.
There are many families that don't have these some of these "luxeries",
but everything should be included if it's a household expense.


Lastly, you'll need to allow a certain amount of funds for you to
have time to get back on your feet after your loss. We're human beings
and overwhelming loss must be dealt with. You may not be ready to
get right back to work and you shouldn't "have to" either.

Take the time to walk around each room of the house with a pen and
paper and write down anything else that you can think of that might
need to be considered. No matter how insignifigant it may seem you don't
want to remember something after it's too late.

You need to take the time right away to speak to an insurance agent
and get yourself the peace of mind that only comes with knowing that
you and your family are taken care of in the event of a tragedy.