Illinois Life Insurance 

Life Insurance is the foundation of financial security for you and your family. It protects your financial resources against the uncertainties of life so you can plan for the future. Illinois health insurance does provide coverage, but you must also have life insurance as well.

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Many financial experts consider life insurance to be the cornerstone of sound financial planning. It can be an important tool in the following situations: Replace income for dependents If people depend on your income, life insurance can replace that income for them if you die. The most commonly recognized case of this is parents with young children. However, it can also apply to couples in which the survivor would be financially stricken by the income lost through the death of a partner, and to dependent adults, such as parents, siblings or adult children who continue to rely on you financially. Insurance to replace your income can be especially useful if the government- or employer-sponsored benefits of your surviving spouse or domestic partner will be reduced after your death. Pay final expenses Life insurance can pay your funeral and burial costs, probate and other estate administration costs, debts and medical expenses not covered by health insurance. Create an inheritance for your heirs Even if you have no other assets to pass to your heirs, you can create an inheritance by buying a life insurance policy and naming them as beneficiaries. Pay federal death taxes and state death taxes Life insurance benefits can pay estate taxes so that your heirs will not have to liquidate other assets or take a smaller inheritance. Changes in the federal death tax rules between now and January 1, 2011 will likely lessen the impact of this tax on some people, but some states are offsetting those federal decreases with increases in their state-level death taxes. Make significant charitable contributions By making a charity the beneficiary of your life insurance, you can make a much larger contribution than if you donated the cash equivalent of the policys premiums. Create a source of savings Some types of life insurance create a cash value that, if not paid out as a death benefit, can be borrowed or withdrawn on the ownerıs request. Since most people make paying their life insurance policy premiums a high priority, buying a cash-value type policy can create a kind of forced savings plan. Furthermore, the interest credited is tax deferred (and tax exempt if the money is paid as a death claim).

In most cases, if you have no dependents and have enough money to pay your final expenses, you donıt need any life insurance. However, if you want to create an inheritance or make a charitable contribution, you should buy enough life insurance to achieve those goals. If you have dependents, you should buy enough life insurance so that, when combined with other sources of income, it will replace the income you now generate for them, plus enough to offset any additional expenses they will incur replacing services you currently provide (for example, if you do the taxes for your family, the survivors might have to hire a professional tax preparer). Also, your family might need extra money to make some changes after you die. For example, they may want to relocate, or your spouse may need to go back to school to be in a better position to help support the family. Most families have some sources of post-death income besides life insurance. The most common source is Social Security Survivor benefits. Many also have life insurance through an employer plan, and some from other affiliations, such as an association they belong to or a credit card. Although these sources might provide a significant income, it is rarely enough. A multiple of salary?

Many pundits recommend buying life insurance equal to a multiple of your salary. For example, one advice columnist recommends buying insurance equal to 20 times your salary before taxes. She chose 20 because, if the benefit is invested in bonds that pay 5 percent interest, it would produce an amount equal to your salary at death, so the survivors could live off the interest and wouldnıt have to invade the principal. However, this simplistic formula implicitly assumes no inflation and that one could assemble a bond portfolio that, after expenses, would provide a 5 percent interest stream every year. But assuming inflation is 3 percent per year, the purchasing power of a gross income of $50,000 would drop to about $38,300 in the 10th year. To avoid this income drop-off, the survivors would have to tap into the principal each year. And if they did, they will run out of money in the 16th year. The multiple of salary approach also ignores other sources of income, such as Social Security survivors benefits. These benefits can be substantial. For example, for a person who had been earning a $36,000 salary at death ($3000 a month), maximum Social Security survivors monthly income benefits for a spouse and two children under age 18 could be about $2,300 per month, and this amount would increase each year to match inflation. (It drops when there is only a spouse and one child under 18, and stops completely when there are no children under 18 remaining in the household. Also, the surviving spouseıs benefit would be reduced if the spouse earns income over a certain limit.) In this example, the survivors would need life insurance to replace only $700 per month (adjusted for inflation) of lost income; Social Security would provide the rest. These survivors would need life insurance to replace about $1,150 per month (adjusted for inflation) once the nonworking surviving spouse has only one child under 18 in her care, and the surviving nonworking spouse would have to replace the entire $3,000 (adjusted for inflation) when the youngest child turns 18.   What are the principal types of life insurance? There are two major types of life insurance term and whole life. Whole life is sometimes called permanent life insurance, and it encompasses several subcategories, including traditional whole life, universal life, variable life and variable universal life. In 2003, about 6.4 million individual life insurance policies bought were term and about 7.1 million were whole life. Life insurance products for groups are different from life insurance sold to individuals. The information below focuses on life insurance sold to individuals. Term Term Insurance is the simplest form of life insurance. It pays only if death occurs during the term of the policy, which is usually from one to 30 years. Most term policies have no other benefit provisions. There are two basic types of term life insurance policies level term and decreasing term. Level term means that the death benefit stays the same throughout the duration of the policy. Decreasing term means that the death benefit drops, usually in one-year increments, over the course of the policy's term. In 2003, virtually all (97 percent) of the term life insurance bought was level term.  Whole Life/Permanent Whole life or permanent insurance pays a death benefit whenever you die even if you live to 100! There are three major types of whole life or permanent life insurance traditional whole life, universal life, and variable universal life, and there are variations within each type. In the case of traditional whole life, both the death benefit and the premium are designed to stay the same (level) throughout the life of the policy. The cost per $1,000 of benefit increases as the insured person ages, and it obviously gets very high when the insured lives to 80 and beyond. The insurance company could charge a premium that increases each year, but that would make it very hard for most people to afford life insurance at advanced ages. So they keep the premium level by charging a premium that, in the early years, is higher than whatıs needed to pay claims, investing that money, and then using it to supplement the level premium to help pay the cost of life insurance for older people. By law, when these overpayments reach a certain amount, they must be available to the policyowner as a cash value if he or she decides not to continue with the original plan. The cash value is an alternative, not an additional, benefit under the policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, life insurance companies introduced two variations on the traditional whole life productıuniversal life insurance and variable universal life insurance. How is life insurance sold? You can buy life insurance either as an individual or as part of a group plan. Individual Policy When you buy an individual policy, you choose the company, the plan, and the benefits and features that are right for you and your family. You might be able to buy the policy from the same agent or company representative who sells you property and liability insurance for your home, auto or business. And although you wonıt qualify for any discounts by buying your life insurance and other insurance from the same representative, working with a single advisor for all your insurance needs can make your financial life simpler. Individual policies are typically sold through insurance agents or brokers. If you buy a policy through an agent or broker, you will pay a commission, also called a load that is built into the premium rate. The commission compensates the agent or broker for the time spent advising you on how much and what type of life insurance to buy, for facilitating the application process, and for any further service thatıs needed in future years to keep the policy up-to-date (such as changing beneficiary designations, arranging policy loans or coordinating your financial plans with your lawyer and accountant). There are two other ways to buy individual life insurance. In Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, you can buy it from a savings bank. Or you can buy a policy directly from an insurance company or from a fee-only financial advisor whats known as a no load or low load policy. Although there is no sales commission on these policies, the company will still have charges built into the premium to cover its marketing expenses, application processing expenses and subsequent services. Finding an insurance company that will sell you a no-load policy isnıt easy; typing in ıno load life insuranceı on Internet search engines will in many cases lead you to an agent or broker. Group Policy You might have life insurance automatically from your employer; many large companies do this. Your employer also might offer you the chance to buy additional life insurance under a group policy. And you might be eligible to buy life insurance under a group policy from a union or trade association or other group you belong to (such as a college alumni association or an automobile club). Compared to buying an individual life insurance policy, there are several advantages to buying life insurance under a group policy: Group purchase can sometimes offer you a lower rate for a given death benefit either because the employer or other group sponsor subsidizes the premium or because the rates are averages weighted by people younger than you. There are virtually no health qualifications for getting the group coverage. Premium payment is usually by payroll deduction (for employer-based group coverage) or linked with other payments (e.g., credit card bills), lowering the chance of missing a payment. Most employer group plans are term insurance, but if you leave that employer your state may require that you be allowed to convert the policy to a form of whole life insurance with the same insurance company that provides the group life insurance. You would then pay premiums directly to the company and keep the insurance in force. This can be an advantage if you are older, or have experienced deteriorating health, as it gives you the opportunity to qualify for whole life insurance without having a medical exam. Credit Life Insurance Credit cards and lending institutions may offer life insurance to pay off your outstanding loans in the event of your death. This is generally made available in two ways As part of the loan at no extra charge. In this case the cost of the life insurance is borne by the lender and is included in its interest rate or other finance charges. If you have this type of credit life insurance, you donıt need separate life insurance to pay off that loan if you die. As an option at an extra charge. In this case, you should usually reject the optional coverage, provided that you have some other life insurance (group or individual) that can be designated to pay off the loan if you die. If youıre under age 50 and you donıt have other insurance that could pay off this loan, consider buying individual life insurance for this purpose as the rates will probably be better. At 50 or over (or younger with health issues), if you have no other life insurance for this purpose, the optional credit life insurance is likely to be cheaper than individual life insurance. What are the types of term insurance policies? Term insurance comes in two basic varietiesılevel term and decreasing term. These days, almost everyone buys level term insurance. The terms level and decreasing refer to the death benefit amount during the term of the policy. A level term policy pays the same benefit amount if death occurs at any point during the term. Common types of level term are: yearly- (or annually-) renewable term 5-year renewable term 10-year term 15-year term 20-year term 25-year term 30-year term term to a specified age (usually 65) Yearly renewable term, once popular, is no longer a top seller. The most popular type is now 20-year term. Most companies will not sell term insurance to an applicant for a term that ends past his or her 80th birthday. If a policy is renewable, that means it continues in force for an additional term or terms, up to a specified age, even if the health of the insured (or other factors) would cause him or her to be rejected if he or she applied for a new life insurance policy. Generally, the premium for the policy is based on the insured personıs age and health at the policys start, and the premium remains the same (level) for the length of the term. So, premiums for 5-year renewable term can be level for 5 years, then to a new rate reflecting the new age of the insured, and so on every five years. Some longer term policies will guarantee that the premium will not increase during the term; others donıt make that guarantee, enabling the insurance company to raise the rate during the policyıs term. Some term policies are convertible. This means that the policyıs owner has the right to change it into a permanent type of life insurance without additional evidence of insurability. Return of Premium In most types of term insurance, including homeowners and auto insurance, if you havenıt had a claim under the policy by the time it expires, you get no refund of the premium. Your premium bought the protection that you had but didnıt need, and youıve received fair value. Some term life insurance consumers have been unhappy at this outcome, so some insurers have created term life with a ıreturn of premiumı feature. The premiums for the insurance with this feature are often significantly higher than for policies without it, and they generally require that you keep the policy in force to its term or else you forfeit the return of premium benefit. Some policies will return the base premium but not the extra premium (for the return benefit), and others will return both.   What are the different types of permanent policies? Whole or ordinary life This is the most common type of permanent insurance policy. It offers a death benefit along with a savings account. If you pick this type of life insurance policy, you are agreeing to pay a certain amount in premiums on a regular basis for a specific death benefit. The savings element would grow based on dividends the company pays to you. Universal or adjustable life This type of policy offers you more flexibility than whole life insurance. You may be able to increase the death benefit, if you pass a medical examination. The savings vehicle (called a cash value account) generally earns a money market rate of interest. After money has accumulated in your account, you will also have the option of altering your premium payments ı providing there is enough money in your account to cover the costs. This can be a useful feature if your economic situation has suddenly changed. However, you would need to keep in mind that if you stop or reduce your premiums and the saving accumulation gets used up, the policy might lapse and your life insurance coverage will end. You should check with your agent before deciding not to make premium payments for extended periods because you might not have enough cash value to pay the monthly charges to prevent a policy lapse. Variable life This policy combines death protection with a savings account that you can invest in stocks, bonds and money market mutual funds. The value of your policy may grow more quickly, but you also have more risk. If your investments do not perform well, your cash value and death benefit may decrease. Some policies, however, guarantee that your death benefit will not fall below a minimum level. Variable-universal life If you purchase this type of policy, you get the features of variable and universal life policies. You have the investment risks and rewards characteristic of variable life insurance, coupled with the ability to adjust your premiums and death benefit that is characteristic of universal life insurance. Why should I purchase permanent insurance? A permanent life policy provides lifelong insurance protection. The policy pays a death benefit if you die tomorrow or if you live to be a hundred. There is also a savings element that will grow on a tax-deferred basis and may become substantial over time. Because of the savings element, premiums are generally higher for permanent than for term insurance. However, the premium in a permanent policy remains the same, while term can go up substantially every time you renew it. There are a number of different types of permanent insurance policies, such as whole (ordinary) life, universal life, variable life, and variable/universal life. In a permanent policy, the cash value is different from its face value amount. The face amount is the money that will be paid at death. Cash value is the amount of money available to you. There are a number of ways that you can use this cash savings. For instance, you can take a loan against it or you can surrender the policy before you die to collect the accumulated savings. There are unique features to a permanent policy such as: You can lock in premiums when you purchase the policy. By purchasing a permanent policy, the premium will not increase as you age or if your health status changes. The policy will accumulate cash savings. Depending on the policy, you may be able to withdraw some of the money. You also may have these options: Use the cash value to pay premiums. If unexpected expenses occur, you can stop or reduce your premiums. The cash value in the policy can be used toward the premium payment to continue your current insurance protection ı providing there is enough money accumulated. Borrow from the insurance company using the cash value in your life insurance as collateral. Like all loans, you will ultimately need to repay the insurer with interest. Otherwise, the policy may lapse or your beneficiaries will receive a reduced death benefit. However, unlike loans from most financial institutions, the loan is not dependent on credit checks or other restrictions.