Indepth articles on life insurance, written by The Term Guy life insurance expert Glenn Cooke.
Without a specific income, as is the case with a stay at home mother or father, how do we determine the proper amount and type of life insurance?
Renewable and Convertible are two options available on most (but not all) term life insurance policies in Canada. These two options are always found together, and are provided for in the policy contract at no additional cost.
Partial conversion with term reset is a newer option offered by some companies that extends the renewable and convertible term life insurance options.
There are two types of life insurance in Canada: Term Life insurance and Permanent Life Insurance. Term life insurance is often used for needs that may span decades, but eventually no further life insurance is needed (mortgages, family needs, etc).
Whole life insurance is the appropriate type of life insurance for needs that are permanent – they exist no matter how old you are when you pass. Examples would be estate creation or final expenses.
Term to 100 life insurance is a form or permanent life insurance. It’s easily understood to be whole life insurance but without cash surrender values. Because term to 100 is permanent life insurance, it’s suitable for people looking for final expense life insurance or a policy to gift an amount to your beneficiaries upon your passing.
If you’re asking whether you’ll qualify for preferred vs standard life insurance premiums, the answer is – we don’t know (and neither does any life insurance broker). There are however some things we can do in order to mildly increase your chances.
There really isn’t any ‘worst’ life insurance company in Canada. There are a variety of attributes where some companies are mildly better than others, and there are a few things you can do that are under your control that can help improve your experience with any life insurance company in Canada.
When we’re young, we’re generally purchasing life insurance to replace our income – we need enough life insurance to maintain our family’s standard of living in the event of our premature passing – to cover things like looking after the kids, paying a mortgage, etc.
Do you qualify at smoking rates on your life insurance? Is there any way to get around these higher premiums? What about marijuana smoking? Or Vaping? We’ll answer all these questions in this article, and show you some strategies to reduce your premiums.
This life insurance strategy is becoming more commonplace in the industry. You should be aware that the strategy is an excellent retirement savings strategy in some instances – and entirely inappropriate in other instances. If you have not maximized your RRSP’s and TFSA’s already, then this strategy is not likely appropriate for you.
Universal life insurance has two discrete components in the policy – an insurance component, and an investment component. The insurance component can be considered as a term insurance policy if it stood on it’s own. The investment component, unlike whole life, is discrete and trackable.
The exchange option lets you trade your existing term life insurance policy for a new, longer term policy. You can consider this as ‘resetting’ your term to a new policy. The reset is done at premiums based on your age when you do the exchange.
Life insurance medical exams are not really ‘exams’ and aren’t as intrusive as you might expect. They’re intended as data collection so that the insurance underwriter can evaluate and eliminate risk factors – not as a tool to pass a judgement on your health so they can deny coverage. They’re also not an exam, as they’re not pass-fail.
Have you received a rating on your life insurance policy? Or do you expect to receive a rating on your application? In this article I’ll show you how to minimize the possibility of a rating, and your options should you receive one.
Layering of life insurance policies is a strategy that can allow you to inexpensively decrease your coverage over time. The motivation is that you may consider that you need $1,000,000 of coverage for the next 10 years, and then only need $500,000 of coverage for the following 10 years. Layering of policies allows you to accomplish this.
Term stacking is a new term life insurance strategy developed here at The Term Guy. It takes advantage of some unique pricing structures in one company’s term life insurance policies (but can sometimes be extended into other companies’ term life insurance policies as well), along with a common term life insurance benefit – the exchange option.
If your birthday is coming up, or if your birthday was six months ago, you are likely up for a premium increase (because your age is going to be one year higher). Backdating is a technique to preserve your current age, and allows you to keep the lower premiums for the entirety of your life insurance policy.
Looking for life insurance, but you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes? Good news – in many cases you can qualify at standard or regular life insurance premiums!
Are you a stay at home parent who’s looking to protect your family? We have life insurance for that!
Planning on quitting? I’m going to show you how to get premiums comparable to non-smokers premiums. Safely, and effectively. And without buying less insurance to reduce the costs.
What qualifies as smoking for life insurance company premiums? It's not always what you think it might be.
Term stacking is a new term life insurance strategy developed here at The Term Guy. It takes advantage of some unique pricing structures in one company’s term life insurance policies (but can sometimes be extended into other companies’ term life insurance policies as well), along with a common term life insurance benefit – the exchange option.
10 year term life insurance is on the surface, a straightforward product. It’s a life insurance policy that lasts for 10 year – or so it seems. But in fact, that’s not how most 10 year term life insurance policies work.
The short answer is that by definition term life insurance does not have cash surrender values. There are rare exceptions, but by default, they do not.
The correct way to cancel your life insurance policy depends on the type of life insurance policy that you have. Best practices vary depending on whether you have term life insurance, whole life insurance, or universal life insurance.
You may assume that you are looking for joint first to die life insurance – if you or your spouse should die, it’ll pay on the first person’s death and the surviving spouse is then looked after. And that’s true. You may also assume that this coverage comes with a substantial discount over two individual coverages – but it turns out that this is not the case.