What is the best term life insurance?
Finding the best term life insurance is like putting a puzzle together, you need to match these four parts: eligibility, guarantees, time, and cost. The puzzle pieces are unique for each individual so the best term life insurance will differ from person to person. Here are how the puzzle parts fit together for each person. The life protection services of a life insurance company are provided to people through a contract called a policy. The contract states that if you meet the ELIGIBILITY requirements of the insurance company, it will GUARANTEE to pay to a beneficiary a set amount of money if you die within a certain amount of TIME. Furthermore, in exchange for this guaranteed payment by the life insurance company, the contract states that you agree to pay a specific COST or premium to the life insurance company. It is that simple. The way to find the best term life insurance is to determine which insurer matches your ELIGIBILITY; has the best GUARANTEE; fits your TIME line and has a competitive COST.
Put the puzzle parts into questions in this order.
How do you determine the best number of years or TIME period to have life insurance?
Which life insurance company’s ELIGIBILITY requirements do you best meet?
How can you find the best price or COST?
How can you determine the safety of the life insurance company’s GUARANTEE?
TIME
The length of time that a life insurance policy is structured will change the cost dramatically and perhaps affect your eligibility. To find the best length or time of a life insurance policy, match the life insurance policy with your needs. Here is an example of how finding the right length of life insurance policy applies. If you have a thirty-year mortgage on your home, you want to protect your family’s ability to stay in the home if you die within that thirty-year time frame. You would shop for a 30-year life insurance policy to fill that need.
What do you do if you need life insurance for between 21 and 29 years? You may want to consider quotes on a 30-year term life insurance policy. You may ask why not search for a 25-year term life insurance policy if your need is for between 21 and 25 years? You can search for a 25-year term life insurance policy, but what you may find is that there are more 30-year term life insurance policies available than 25-year life insurance policies. More life insurance companies have chosen to create a 30-year contract over a 25-year contract at this point. That may change in the future. Additionally, you may find that the 30-year term life insurance policies are competitively priced with the 25-year policies. So, it might make sense to buy the 30-year term life insurance policy. If you do not need if for the full thirty years, you can terminate the policy at any time by notifying the life insurance company that you no longer need the life insurance policy.
We have made searching for the best length of time for a life insurance policy easy. On the homepage of Advice4LifeInsurance.com, we have a search engine that will research for you. When you get to the “type of insurance” tab, click on “30-year term” or whatever length of time you choose. Once your information is entered, the quote search engine will instantly list the nation’s top-rated life insurance carriers that offer a 30-year term life insurance policy. If you are searching for 20-year life insurance policies versus 15-year life insurance policies, the circumstance is similar. More insurers are offering 20-year life insurance policies than those offering 15-year policies.
The length of time that you are requesting a life insurance policy will affect your eligibility. Most life insurance companies stop offering term life insurance policies past the age of eighty. If you are sixty years old and you search for a 30-year term life insurance policy, the quote engine will not provide any options because of the period you are requesting goes beyond the age of eighty. If you are sixty years old, looking for term life insurance, the longest length of policy you will find is twenty years. Unless you find an annually renewable life insurance policy. Annually renewable life insurance policies increase in price every year and can last up to age 95. However, those people holding annually renewable life insurance policies usually cancel them long before the age of 95 because they become so expensive in the latter years.
ELIGIBILITY
Every life insurance company has ELIGIBILITY requirements that they have established for offering their life insurance policies. The process of evaluating potential customers ELIGIBILITY requirements is called underwriting. The personnel that assesses your application for life insurance coverage are called underwriters. The first step to consider in finding the best term life insurance coverage is determining which life insurance company’s ELIGIBILITY requirements you fit? Here are some of the ELIGIBILITY requirements that life insurance companies consider: gender, age, your health, and lifestyle habits. Let's break these four eligibility requirements down more specifically.
GENDER
It is a fact that women historically live longer than men. As a result, with all other factors being equal, life insurance cost for women is less expensive than for men. If you find an individual life insurance policy that has one rate for men and women, usually these policies are overpriced for women. Gender-specific individual life insurance policies have more competitive cost. Gender is not a significant factor in finding the best term life insurance
AGE
Age is a significant factor in determining the cost of term life insurance. As you get older, term life insurance policies will increase in cost. A person’s age for a life insurance policy is usually calculated using the age closest within six months of when the date of the life insurance policy is issued to a customer. For example, if you are applying for a policy on January 1st and your birthdate is on June 1st, the policy would be calculated at the June 1st age in the current year. Here is where an experienced life insurance agent will save you money. Some life insurance policies allow the policies to be backdated. This tactic would be useful in the previous example. If a policy could be backdated to December 1st of the previous year, then the life insurance policy’s cost will be based on the previous birthdate. As you get older, that saving-the-age strategy can save you a considerable amount of money. If you were buying a 30-year life insurance policy, that strategy would save you money every year for the next thirty years.
Term life insurance policies are available with coverage up until age 80. Age is a factor that life insurance companies heavily compete for your business. From age 18 to 50, finding the best life insurance cost changes frequently depending upon competing insurers, life insurance company proprietary strategy changes, the economy, technology, insurer profitability, and insurer losses. A new life insurance policy that had the best price this year might not be as competitively priced next year. Life insurance companies change their new life insurance rates from year to year to remain competitive. To find the best price for ages 18 to 50, we have created two life insurance quote search engines. The Instant Life Insurance Quotes section of our home page will give the best prices by age for people ages 18 to 50. This quote engine compares life insurance quotes from the nation’s top-rated carriers.
If you meet the ELIGIBILITY requirements, you might qualify for No-Exam Life Insurance. No-exam life insurance only requires you to answer a few questions about your health and your lifestyle habits. In short, if you are in good health and have a good driving record, you may qualify for No-Exam Life. We have created a life insurance quote engine that searches the nation’s top-rated carriers that offer No-Exam Life Insurance to find the best policy for you.
Once a person reaches the age of 50, the competitive nature of term life insurance companies begins to narrow. Some companies specialize in covering people from age 50 to 80, so it warrants shopping for the best cost. The other life insurance quote engine that we have created at Advice4LifeInsurance.com specializes in searching for life insurance coverage from companies that give the best rates for people from age 50-80. The Senior Life Insurance quote engine compares life insurance quotes from the nation’s top-rated carriers for people age 50-80.
Your Health
How health is considered is a substantial difference in term life insurance. We generally classify how customers will apply for life insurance in three ways.
Excellent Health - People with excellent health can get life insurance in less time and at a lower cost. If you have excellent health, you may qualify for the No-Exam life insurance that was previously mentioned.
Better Health - If you have what we call better health, that may mean that you have a health issue that is not a significant factor. You may not qualify for No-Exam life insurance, but that does not mean that you will not be eligible for the lowest COST. How you prove your eligibility is different. If you have had recent doctor visits, been prescribed medications, or had a speeding ticket, you may be required to answer more questions concerning your eligibility for life insurance. You may also need to agree to have your basic vital signs check or agree to a blood and urine test. Don’t be discouraged; you can still get good life insurance rates and the testing is done at your convenience and doesn’t cost you anything.
Improving Health. If you have a significant health issue, we can still help you get life insurance. It may take some effort on our part to find the right life insurance company for you. We excel at finding the best term life insurance for those with health issues. The best way to help people with significant health issues is to have a conversation about your issue and discuss what you need. There is a process of finding competitively priced life insurance for you too. If you have more than one health issue, you can still qualify for life insurance. If you have a particular health issue, visit our Health Issues and High-Risk Blog. You will find posts on various health issues and learn how we go about finding you the best term life insurance coverage based on your specific health issues.
Lifestyle Habits
Lifestyle habits can have a big effect on life insurance cost and availability. Most life insurance companies will increase the cost of life insurance by 50% to 100% for customers that smoke cigarettes or marijuana. However, some life insurance companies do offer lower rates than their competitors. Cigars and smokeless tobacco use may increase cost depending upon the frequency of use. There is a company that will provide customers with non-smoking rates if the customer agrees to stop smoking and be tested for nicotine after twelve months. If the customer still smokes, they will not have their life insurance canceled. However, the rates will increase to smoker rates.
Lifestyle habits would also encompass high-risk hobbies or higher risk occupations. For example, scuba divers will have higher rates if they dive below a certain depth. Pilots will have lower rates after they have a certain number of hours flying experience. The general approach for high-risk hobbies and high-risk occupations is being very specific about the frequency and extent of either hobbies or professions.
Lifestyle habits also include driving. If you have a higher than average number of auto accidents, you have three or more speeding tickets, DUI or reckless driving violations; it will affect your cost or eligibility for life insurance.
It takes extra effort in communicating with a life insurance underwriter about any lifestyle habits. To find the best term life insurance policy in these circumstances, a more experienced life insurance agent can offer several alternatives. Plus, they can be of significant value in communicating with the life insurance underwriter.
Life Insurance Company Guarantees
The last aspect of finding the best term life insurance is understanding the guarantee that the life insurance company offers. There are two considerations when it comes to guarantees, one is contractual, and the other is financial strength. The contractual aspect of guarantees concerns the guarantee that the premium will not increase. When you are looking for a life insurance policy to be inforce for a certain number of years, be sure that you understand how the cost may change. For example, some companies may offer a 15-year guaranteed life insurance policy. Be cautious and look specifically at what is being guaranteed. The guarantee could be that the life insurance company is only assuring that the customer will be offered life insurance for fifteen years. However, after five years the cost can increase. The printed illustrations that you are provided in instances such as this will have a column of the current price, and it shows the premium being level for fifteen years. However, the guaranteed column on the illustration may show the guaranteed premium is only for five years and then it may increase for the remaining ten years.
The second aspect to consider about life insurance company guarantees is what happens if the life insurance company fails to meet its financial obligations? The first consideration is to look at the financial ratings for the life insurance company that meets the other three qualifications of eligibility, time, and cost for you. When you enter your personal information into one of the quote search engines at Advice4LifeInsurance.com, you will be provided a list of companies that best meet your needs. That illustration will also have a page that compares the financial strength of the life insurance companies. You may find that the best term life insurance company for you is a lower rated life insurance company. However, another life insurance company with better financial ratings is a few percents higher in cost. At that point, you should communicate with your life insurance agent and ask for their advice. An experienced life insurance agent can help you assess the financial strength of a life insurance company and answer your questions to help you determine if the lower rated company that is less expensive or, the higher rated company that cost more is best for you. We have created a page that lists most of the top-rated life insurance companies that you research life insurance company financial ratings.
Finding the best term life insurance company is simplified by the technology available through websites like Advice4LifeInsurance.com . Although, people’s circumstances vary from person to person and technology has its limits. To help find the best term life insurance takes the knowledge of an experienced life insurance agent. One who can understand the life insurance marketplace, knows the uses and limits of insurer technology, and can be understanding toward people’s unique circumstances.
By Van Richards
You can contact me on Facebook Messenger, email or phone at 713-320-6124