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Looking Back at Life Insurance For Older People

By Marilyn Katz

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 01Nov2008 Word count: 545 Viewed: 315 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

If you are a baby boomer or senior citizen, it is time to evaluate your life insurance. We have some great news. Life insurance rates have dropped a lot in the last ten years. Longer life and health spans have accounted for some of the rate drops. Americans are living longer and healthier lives. In addition, tougher auto safety standards have reduced traffic fatalities. So some insurance actuaries did the numbers, and realized they could do better in a competitive market by reducing premiums!

What does this mean to you? Well, say you were 50 years old in 1998, and you took out a 20 year term life insurance policy. In 2008 you are 60, but you may actually save money by covering the remaining 10 years with a new term life policy. For one thing, insurance rates have dropped. For another thing, you are only asking the insurer to take a 10 year risk. If you are reasonably healthy for a person your age, it is worth comparing rates to find out if the switch will help your pocket book.

You also have some other things to think about that may encourage you to research the rate advantages of switching. Did you have more to cover in the past when you took out your policy. In addition, did you have less savings to back you up with self-insurance?

If you took out a 30 year term life policy at 40, you may have figured in a mortgage, children's education expenses, and very little savings to fall back on. Maybe now, at 55, the kids are all settled in their careers and your savings and investments provide a comfortable nest age. In addition, your home could be paid off, or at least, have a lot less payments remaining than it did 15 years ago.

Now this logic will not work for everybody. If you have certain diseases, your health may not allow you to obtain the best rates. And life does not always work out the way our financial planners tell us it will. Sometimes our kids do not support themselves as quickly as we had hoped, and sometimes financial problems can cut into our savings. And you may have takenn on new obligations that you did not consider 15 years ago. Perhaps you started a business, or your wife's parents are living with you now, and so your obligations have not shrunk as much as you thought they would.

If you would like to find out if a new life insurance policy would save you money, and if you think it might make sense in your life, you can do some research without much effort. These days, you can find fast online quote forms that allow you to enter your basic information to get back competitive life insurance quotes. Find out what the local life insurance companies charge for various policy amounts, and then go talk to a qualified insurance agent to make sure you qualify for a new plan.

Never cancel your own coverage until you have the policy for your new policy in your hand. An agent can give you a quote, but insurane underwriters could decline or rate up your policy because of factors beyond you or your agent's control.

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