What Credentials Does A Term Life Insurance Agent Need To Have? By Sharon Taylor

When it comes to choosing the right term life insurance company, or a term life insurance agency that can provide the right products and services to you at rates that you can handle, there are some important considerations that you absolutely must be willing to make before you settle down on any one policy.

Term Life Insurance Agent Credentials

The first and one of the most important things that you need to keep in mind when it comes to term life insurance, is that every person who sells life insurance in your state must be licensed properly in the state they are practicing in. Before you decide to do business with a specific no medical term life insurance agent, you need to find out if they have all of the proper licenses and credentials to be selling you insurance. You would probably be surprised if you knew how many insurance agents were out there making sales without obtaining the right credentials or renewing their licenses regularly. Learn more about no medical term life insurance at http://healthfreakmommy.blogspot.com/2007/12/no-medical-term-life-insurance.html.

What many people looking to purchase no medical term life insurance are not aware of is that in order for an insurance salesperson to operate, they must undergo a series of courses to keep their licenses up to date. An insurance agent without a license, or one who does not go through required training and schooling, is not going to be a safe and effective insurance agent to work with. If you end up dealing with a shady insurance agent, you may find yourself with an insurance plan that amounts to nothing when it really matters.

There are also insurance agents that work out of their own homes. While these home based agents may have their licenses and proper credentials, this is another issue worth looking into when it comes to choosing the right no medical term life insurance agent. Be prepared to ask questions of any prospective term life insurance agent, and if they appear not to be genuine in nature, properly licensed, and certified by the state that you are purchasing insurance in, it is time for you to simply move on.

Before doing business with a specific term life insurance agent, you should check with the insurance regulator in your state to see if he or she has ever had a complaint lodged against his or her insurance agency. Checking out the credentials for each and every potential insurance agent is another important step. The following five insurance agency credentials are the most common. If your prospective term life insurance agent does not meet these credentials, or cannot readily prove that they do, it may be best to look elsewhere for your insurance policy. Find out more about term life insurance by visiting http://mysoulfulthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/11/equote.html.

CFP -- Certified Financial Planner

CLU -- Chartered Life Underwriter

ChFC -- Chartered Financial Consultant

CPA -- Certified Public Accountant

PFS -- Personal Financial Specialist

Ensuring that your term life insurance company or agent has the right licenses, credentials and history is all about protecting yourself. It would be terrible to find out that you have been ripped off, or that your insurance policy is not valid because your insurance agent was not properly licensed at the time of your sale. Term life insurance is serious business, and the only way to protect yourself is to make sure that you are dealing with legitimate insurance agencies when you purchase your insurance policies.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=221280&ca=Finances

Opportunity Cost And Your Long Term Care Decision By Robert D. Cavanaugh, CLU

If you are out shopping for long term care (commonly abbreviated as LTCI or LTC), I'm going to encourage you to take a look at a way of providing long term care benefits that is probably new to you. On the other hand, if you are in the crowd that thinks they will never need long term care, I would also suggest you evaluate this line of thinking.

Dick and Jane are both age 65, recently retired and models of good health. They have ignored the long term care subject until recently. They just put Jane's mother, who is 88, into a nursing home. Talk about sticker shock! She is in a nice place, but Dick and Jane are not 100% certain that her assets will allow her to stay there for the rest of her life.

Consequently, they have been out looking at long term care for themselves. They figure they can afford to insure a portion of what it might cost them if they ever need some form of LTCI, so they are looking at a benefit of $3,000 a month. The premium is around $4,200 a year.

Here's a new concept that Dick and Jane must become accustomed to now that they are retired. They both had good jobs during their working years. If they ever wanted to buy anything, it was just a question of looking at their income to see if they could swing the purchase. Pretty straightforward.

Now that they are retired, most of their expenditures are going to come from investment returns on the assets they have accumulated, not income from working. So they need to understand the difference between premium cost and opportunity cost. Here's what I mean…

If they elect to buy this $4,200 a year long term care policy, the money has to come from somewhere. Chances are it's coming from the interest earned on perhaps a CD or an annuity. But there is an opportunity cost associated with paying the premiums from earnings on any asset.

Let's say they are going to pay this $4,200 from the interest on a CD they own which is earning 5.4% interest. Since interest is taxable, and assuming they are in a 15% tax bracket, they would have to have $91,300 in that CD to produce $4,200 after tax to pay the premium.

They can't spend the $91,300. It can't grow. Basically, they have 'committed' $91,300 of their assets to pay the premium on their LTC policy. That's the one 'job' of this $91,300. The premium may only be $4,200 a year, but the opportunity cost is $91,300.

Let's take a look at another of their alternatives. It's called asset based long term care. How it works will unfold as I provide the example and contrast below.

One approach to asset based long term care involves re-positioning $91,300 of Dick and Jane's CD to a combination long term care/life insurance policy plan with an insurance company. Here's what moving this money does for them…

The money on deposit with the insurance company grows at interest, but it is tax-deferred interest so the insurance company will not send them 1099s every year for an amount they have to pay tax on like the bank is required to do. In 10 years, assuming current rates, the $91,300 will grow to $127,000; in 20 years $161,000. The CD, remember, does not grow, as its job is to spin off interest to pay the annual $4,200 premium on the traditional LTCI plan.

If either Dick or Jane needs any form of long term care, the insurance company plan will pay them $3,900 a month for 50 months--$900 a month more than the traditional plan.

But here's the real kicker.

If Dick and Jane never need long term care, then the camp that doesn't buy it would have been right. If Dick and Jane bought the traditional long term care plan, in 10 years they would have paid out $42,000 in premiums and about $7,400 in taxes on their CD interest in order to net out the required premium. That's a total of $49,700. The $91,300 portion of their CD would still be $91,300.

However, if Dick and Jane never need long term care, chose the asset based long term care plan and both die, for example in 10 years, the outcome is different. They have paid no annual premiums and the life insurance company will pay about $198,000 tax free to their kids.

Which sounds like a better plan?

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=138201&ca=Finances