Saving on Life Insurance: Scoring the Best Deal

by shoppingblog1st

Most people know they need life insurance but are afraid they’ll have to spend an arm and a leg to pay for it. Truthfully, there are multiple ways to score affordable life insurance and they’re much easier than you might have thought.

Getting Started

Knowing what kind of life insurance appeals to you will help ease you into the shopping process. Generally speaking, there are two types of life insurance: term life insurance and permanent life insurance.

Term Life Insurance Term life insurance covers you for a “term” or certain period of time. This means a death benefit will only be paid out if you die during that term. Terms range from five to 30 years; 20-year term policies are most common, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). Most policies can be renewed after they expire, although the premium may increase as you age and insurers typically won’t renew a term policy after you reach your 80th birthday.

Permanent Life Insurance Permanent life insurance comes in four forms: Whole, Variable, Universal and Variable-Universal, and all of them will pay out a death benefit whether you die right after you sign the policy or decades from now. Each form of permanent life insurance has different characteristics, although most permanent life insurance includes an added cash value that grows over the years. Because of these and other benefits, permanent policies tend to be more costly that term policies.

A Time to Shop

Once you’ve researched the different policy types and found one that appeals to you, it’s time to start looking.

Start by inquiring about employer-sponsored life insurance. Group life insurance tends to be less expensive because some employers subsidize the cost of premiums for their employees. Another large benefit to employer-sponsored life insurance is that you’re less likely to have to pass a physical exam.

However,...

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