After successfully doubling my life insurance coverage for less money, Sam and I celebrated over a nice glass of wine. We now have matching life insurance coverage, which we didn’t for the first three years of our son’s life.

Having matching life insurance coverage is logical for us. We just never got around to it until the global pandemic began. If you are a couple who has different death benefit amounts, have a conversation to see if it makes sense.

Getting life insurance when you only have a mortgage, but no kids is a practical move. However, once you have kids, the value of a life insurance policy may go way up because so much more is at stake.

Once you get life insurance, the next logical question to ask is how long does it take to get a life insurance payout. After all, if you get life insurance and it doesn’t pay out or it takes forever to pay out, that would be problematic.

In this post, we’ll review the following:

• How long it takes to get a life insurance payout
• What are the steps to file a life insurance claim to receive a death benefit
• Why could a claim for a life insurance payout be denied

This is a post from Samurai Sydney, my wife. This post highlights how my wife was able to double her life insurance death benefit for less money with PolicyGenius. The one thing we’ve all learned during the pandemic is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. If you have debt and/or dependents, getting life insurance is a must.

At my last full-time job of 10 years, one of the free benefits that came with it was life insurance. When I first joined, I was single, didn’t have kids or a lot of debt, and was pretty carefree at age 25.

Life insurance didn’t mean much to me back then. Today, life insurance is very important to us because we now have two kids. Sam has talked about his life insurance plans, but we had seldom discussed mine.

If you’re going to get life insurance as a couple, don’t forget to get life insurance for both people. The amount of life insurance to get will depend on each person’s ability to generate income and cover any outstanding liabilities.

During our expense audit, we meticulously tried to cut costs on every item. What we realized during this exercise was that Sam and I have been spending more than we should on several things for years. One of those things was my life insurance policy.

Given we have been saving at least 50% of our income for over a decade, we got lazy with always trying to optimize our expenses. Laziness is probably one of the number one money-makers for companies today.

Owning the right amount of life insurance is important to protect your family. With the global pandemic raging on, you don’t want to come up short on your life insurance needs.

If you haven’t done so already, calculate your net worth to assess how you did this past year. Hopefully, you’ve grown your net worth in this incredible 10+-year bull market through aggressive savings, retirement company matches, a diversified investment portfolio, rental property cash-flow, and more.

Once you’ve calculated your net worth, make sure your life insurance levels equals this amount, especially if you have dependents, or a spouse who makes much less than you. If you die, and want your loved ones to maintain a similar standard of living, consider matching your life insurance amount with your family’s net worth amount.

Some might not agree with this life insurance guideline and wonder whether it would be better to have insurance that equals a family’s debt level only. Having enough life insurance to pay off all of your family’s debt is better than no life insurance at all.

If you’re single and have no dependents, do you really need life insurance?  Probably not, but it’s still not a bad idea. If you die with a million bucks in debt, you’re living large!

As a father of two young children, I often think about the right amount of life insurance to protect my family. Let’s go through an example to see what is the right amount of life insurance to protect different types of families.

To keep your life insurance rate class, one way is to convert term life into a permanent life insurance policy. This post will share when converting a term life policy makes sense and when it may not.

In a previous post, I recommended it would be wise to get a life insurance policy before you see a doctor for any non-life threatening health issue. By locking in a life insurance policy first, you reduce your chances of life insurance companies raising your premiums due to additional health issues on your medical record.

In 2017, I went to see an overzealous sleep doctor. He diagnosed me with snoring, a deviated septum, and sleep apnea. To pad his bill, he also recommended I try a CPAP machine and go through a series of sleep tests. I figured why not since my health insurance would pay for everything. I hadn’t seen a single doctor in years, despite paying over $20,000 a year in premiums.

After I did all the sleep tests, I went to check with my existing life insurance company on renewing my life insurance policy. It was a $1 million, 10-year term policy I took out in 2013. A term life insurance policy is appropriate for most people who want life insurance. Unfortunately, I discovered the renewal premium would jump from $40/month to $450/month!

Part of the increase in premium was because I was four years older and over 40. There seems to be a life insurance premium jump at 40 and 45. But most of the reason for the jump was due to the sleep apnea mark on my medical record.

A Life Insurance Solution

After the disappointing news, I thought my life insurance options were over once my term policy expires in 2023. Therefore, since hearing about the higher renewal premiums, I made it my mission to boost my wealth by at least $1 million before the $1 million term policy runs out.

As it turns out, I do have a way to continue getting life insurance based on my old “excellent athletic” rating I received in 2013 when I first got my term policy. The official term for the top life insurance rating is called “Preferred Plus” followed by Preferred, Standard Plus, and Standard.

This post is pertinent for those who:

• Want to continue having life insurance coverage, but are facing a much higher term life insurance rate upon renewal
• Desire to understand the various nuances of a permanent life insurance policy
• Seek to understand who permanent life insurance is for
• Want to see examples of how much a universal life insurance policy costs
• Have always held a negative assumption about permanent life insurance, but can’t elaborate why beyond higher premiums

The following guest post about preparing for death is by Chris Sipola, a reader I met while we were stuck in Frankfurt after our plane back to San Francisco broke down. We drowned our sorrows over free drinks at an airport hotel courtesy of United. At least we got a ~$800 travel voucher.

The purpose of this post is to help readers prepare for a parent’s death. But really, this post can help someone prepare for any family member’s death.

The preparation is very simple – Talk openly and often about all issues related to death in advance of the inevitable so the survivors have a game plan and time to grieve.

Open discussions about illness and death related items (medical decisions, wills, etc) seem unsavory and an invasion of privacy – trust that not having a game plan makes the situation much more unsavory. The survivors will find out more private items than they care to know.

Updated on July 13, 2020. Healthcare affordability continues to be a concern for millions of Americans. When the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was enacted in 2010 I was happy. A universal healthcare system would insure the ~47 million Americans who were previously not insured.

After all, disease doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. Also, being rejected for healthcare coverage due to a pre-existing condition is discriminatory. Healthcare affordability shouldn’t be

Millions Still Can’t Afford Healthcare

Fast forward to today. Millions of people are still uninsured, even though there are subsidies provided by those who make more. (Mostly me and you). What’s going on? Healthcare affordability is an important issue for all Americans.

Nearly 65 percent of uninsured adults who were aware of Obamacare marketplaces said they had not visited one to seek coverage because they didn’t think they would be able to afford it according to The Commonwealth Fund, a private organization aimed to promote a high performing healthcare system.

Further, 85 percent of uninsured adults who actually shopped for coverage said they didn’t enroll in the end because they couldn’t find an affordable plan.

Check out this chart explaining why there are still ~25+ million uninsured people in America.

Nobody really believed that all 47 million uninsured people would suddenly get health insurance under Obamacare, despite the subsidies and penalties. But the fact that five years has gone by and 60% of those who were uninsured are still uninsured seems like another example of incredible government inefficiency.

Yes, 20 million more people now have  health insurance is progress. But what has been the cost?