The Case For Term Life

By Author: Norris Rios
Total Articles: 572
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When you go shopping for life insurance, two of the words you will hear often are permanent and term. These two words discuss two different types of life insurance policies. Permanent insurance is a life insurance policy that is designed to cover you for the rest of your life, as long as you continue to make your premium payments. Term insurance is a policy that covers you only for a certain number of years, and only as long as premium payments are made during that time. Today, we are going to discuss the strong point of term policies.

Case Point 1: The Cost

Term life insurance offers an affordable alternative to permanent life. Because it is a straight insurance policy with no cash value accumulation (something that permanent life insurance has), the premiums cover the cost of insurance only. If you are looking at your life insurance policy as a source of affordable protection for your heirs and not as a source of tax-free loans, possible returns and surrender value, then term life makes the most sense.

The low cost of term life insurance also makes it easy to keep since you don't often have to adjust your ...
... budget for its addition. When you compare the cost of the policy to the benefits, you will probably realize how very valuable this type of policy is.

Case Point 2: Temporary Coverage

Term life insurance is meant to give you a temporary source of life insurance proceeds. This makes it especially handy when you go through a time of increased debt or financial obligation and want to provide your family with an additional death benefit to supplement that.

For instance, let's say you have recently bought a new home with a 15-year mortgage. You already have a permanent life insurance policy covering you, but now the additional $150,000 debt you've taken on for your new home will place an additional burden onto your heirs. If you take out a 15-year term policy with a $150,000 death benefit, then you can reduce that burden for your beneficiaries without increasing your monthly expenses too much.

Case Point 3: The Flexibility

One of the biggest selling points for term life insurance is that it is a very flexible product. You can decide how many years you want the coverage to stand, how much you want your death benefit to be, and even whether or not to continue paying for it once the policy is in-force.

And those are just some of your options. You can also design a policy with a decreasing death benefit to mimic the decreasing debt balances you are trying to cover, one with level premiums or increasing premiums, and you can even add on riders that offer more benefits including a return of premium if no death benefit is paid out by the end of the term.

Life insurance is vital to your family, no matter what kind you buy. But a term life insurance can offer you affordability and flexibility that is unbeaten by other types of life insurance and which fits into your lifestyle and needs perfectly.