Insurance |
|
Your Money > Insurance Articles > Life insurance made...
|
|
By Jane Baker
Life insurance made easy Giving life insurance a miss is one of the biggest financial mistakes you can make. But if you are put off by all the jargon have no fear because help is now at hand. Most of you may not have the life insurance you really need. Why? My guess is that its all just a bit too complicated. And complicated tasks are very easy to put off. But help is at hand Its not your fault! I will readily admit the financial services industry has done little to make protection products easy to understand. Even the policy names themselves can cause great confusion particularly when two plans sound very similar but actually do completely different things. If you want to know more about that, take a look at Protecting your income if things go wrong. The fact is, life insurance itself is not complex, it is simply a policy which pays cash on death. But you will need to make sure you choose the right type of protection and enough cover too. These decisions can be difficult. Get them wrong and you could do untold damage to your family finances further down the line. What do I need to do? In a nutshell, you need to find the right policy and the right amount of cover at the right price. The right policy There are five key policies to choose from, when it comes to protecting your life Level term assurance Level term assurance with critical illness cover Decreasing (mortgage) term assurance Decreasing (mortgage) term assurance with critical illness cover And, if you want to switch your existing policy, critical illness cover as a standalone plan. Confused? To make things a bit easier (and clearer), a new life insurance service has been launched at lovemoney.com which is a bit different. Before you start the quotation process, you will be asked how you want to be protected to help you find the right policy. For example, if you say you have a repayment mortgage which you would like to be paid off on death, you will be pointed in the direction of a decreasing term assurance policy. In other words, to get the right policy, you do not need to wade through lots of jargon, you simply need to know your own needs and requirements. The right amount of cover How much cover should you buy? Answering this question correctly is just as important as getting the right protection plan. Under insure your life and you could leave your family with a significant financial shortfall if they ever have to claim on your policy. To avoid that, check out a cover calculator. If you want to provide protection for your family, for example, the calculator will help you work out how much they might need to live on each year. This will allow you to arrive at the total amount of cover you require to effectively replace your salary and safeguard their lifestyle in your absence. The right price Obviously, you will want to find the most competitively priced policy and that means shopping around. More from lovemoney.com Useful links: |
| ||||||||||||||||||