If you’ve considered getting life insurance but haven’t done it yet, you need to figure out that there may be some specific things that are holding you back. Maybe you’re worried that you won’t qualify for life insurance, or that the cost will be so astronomical as to make it next to impossible to afford. The good news is that it is relatively easy to get a life insurance policy, and there are options for people who are on a budget.
You need to, first of all, realize why it is that you need life insurance. If something happens to you, you want to be sure that your loved ones are taken care of. If you have children that aren’t yet grown and able to provide a living for themselves, for example, you want to make sure they can get by without you.
Life insurance can do things such as pay off your debt or your mortgage if you die. This means that your family can go on and try to recover from their loss without having to worry about losing their home. Life insurance can also cover your final expenses, so that your family can grieve appropriately without having to worry about where their next meal might come from.
Life Insurance on a Budget
Some types of life insurance can be rather expensive. Whole life policies, for example, can cost quite a bit of money. There is a good reason for this: those policies will last through your entire life, as long as you keep up the premiums, and they can also build cash value, which you can eventually borrow against.
Fortunately, for those who can’t afford whole life insurance policies, there is another option. Term life insurance is life insurance that you buy for a specific term. It might be a five year term, a thirty year term, or just about anything in between.
A term life insurance policy doesn’t build cash value, and it is only good for the duration of the term. Because of these factors, term life insurance policies can be relatively inexpensive.
Important Factors in Your Premium
There are some things that will factor into the cost of your life insurance premium. One of them is your current age and health, for example. If you’re in poor health, you can expect to pay more for term life insurance than if you are in good health.
Perhaps the biggest factor in determining how much your premium payments will be is how much coverage you want. Deciding the amount of your life insurance coverage is important. Some experts suggest you should be covered for as much as ten times your annual salary, while others think that six or seven times your annual salary should be enough.
Your budget, then, will play a big role in your premium as well. If you can only afford coverage equal to two or three times your annual salary, it is still worth having so that your family can be protected if something terrible should ever happen to you.
Photo via i_yudai