Did your Life Insurance Expire: Now what?

There are two ways in which your life insurance policy can expire. First off, if you have term life insurance there will definitely come a day when your coverage runs out; this is how a term policy works. The other way that a life insurance policy can expire is if you stop paying your premium. As you can imagine, this is never a good idea. After all, if you are going to pay for life insurance for so long, why give up on paying the premium? When it comes down to it, you never want to lose life insurance this way.

The question is: what should you do when/if your life insurance policy expires. This will bring you back to square one, and can pose many problems if you are not careful about what you are doing.

You have several options to consider. If your term policy expired, you can simply buy more coverage from your current insurer. Just remember, you may not be able to get such an affordable premium this time around. For instance, you may have purchased a term life insurance policy for 20 years when you were 30 years old. By the time it comes to renew your policy, you will be over the age of 50. Obviously, you are going to get stuck paying a higher premium due to your age and quite possibly medical history over that time.

If you stopped paying on your life insurance policy for some reason, you are going to be in a tricky position. The first thing that you must do is assess why you let your last policy expire. If it was financially induced, you may not have the money to purchase another life insurance policy just yet. Of course, some people let their policy expire because they want to shop around for something that is more affordable. As a general rule of thumb, you should never let your life insurance policy expire due to a costly premium until you have another one lined up. This way you do not have to go a day without coverage.

It is never an easy situation to deal with when your life insurance policy expires. With that being said, you do have options. Take the time to learn what you can do to get coverage back in place as soon as possible.

Simply put you need Life Insurance

If you think that passing on a life insurance policy is smart money management, you are entirely wrong. The fact of the matter is that most people need some sort of life insurance policy in place. And not only do they need one of these in place, they also need to make sure that it suits the needs of their family.

There is a very easy way to determine whether or not you need to buy life insurance. Simply put, if you have a spouse or children who rely on your income to survive, you need to have some sort of coverage. If possible, you want your death benefit to be enough so that your beneficiary can live comfortably until they get back on their feet.

The good thing about life insurance is that you can purchase a policy from a number of different companies. To go along with this, there are a wide variety of policies and benefits to choose from. You can opt for whole, term, or universal insurance, and of course determine how much coverage you will buy.

Anybody who thinks that they need life insurance is probably right. You want to make sure that you purchase a policy right away as to take all risk out of the equation.

Should you say no to Life Insurance?

Everybody needs to consider life insurance at some point in time. Okay, not everybody, but a large percentage of the population fits this mold. The fact of the matter is that life insurance is the best way to protect your family if you should pass on early. With that in mind, is there anytime when saying no to life insurance is a good idea? If you cannot answer this question, you will definitely want to keep reading.

Generally speaking, there are three situations in which you may want to pass on life insurance. Even then, you need to consider all of these with extreme care.

  1. If you receive a life insurance policy through your employer, you may be able to pass on buying on your own. But remember, this is a tricky situation because you must consider the level of benefits that you are being provided. For instance, your employer may provide a $25,000 life insurance policy; which is great. But is that enough to help your family? The answer to this question may very well be no. There is nothing wrong with purchasing your own life insurance policy in addition to the one that you receive through work.
  2. Although you may want to purchase life insurance, the money may not be there. While it is a good idea to budget in other areas so that you can purchase some type of policy, for many it is simply not possible. If there is no feasible way to purchase a life insurance policy at this time, you may have to take a pass. Of course, you should always be looking to purchase in the future if your financial situation changes.
  3. If you are not married and have no children, you do not necessarily need to purchase life insurance. A policy is meant to provide money to your beneficiary when you die. If you do not have a family member that relies on your income, you can more than likely do without life insurance.

If you think that you do not need a policy, make sure you are 100 percent positive about this before a final decision is made.