Life insurance is a need that people are aware of, but sadly only a few people have it. It would be easy to dismiss the need for life insurance while we are young and free from sickness. However, it is said that life is like a wheel. Sometimes you are up and other times you are down.

In those moments when you will be at the bottom of the wheel, you never know what may happen. This is why you need to have a life insurance policy. No matter what happens, you will be safe from any financial emergencies that life can throw your way.

• To cover burial expenses

Any life insurance policy will cover the death benefit and final expenses for the policyholder. They will take care of the venue of the wake of the policyholder, which would include most of what is needed for a decent funeral. It would be a very big convenience to have life insurance to take care of these arrangements because it would be difficult for the grieving family to handle them.

• To replace any lost income

Money is always a need, especially for a growing family. This need does not suddenly go away with the passing of a loved one. What if the policyholder was the sole breadwinner for the family? The family that they left behind would need to live on. Having a life insurance policy would make sure that it is possible because the cash benefit the family will receive from the insurance plan would make up for the lost income.

• To build cash value

If you choose a life insurance plan that would include an investment side to it, then it would be possible for you to build savings with your life insurance plan. In this day and age, there are so many temptations. Shopping has become so easy because we can do it online. This is why it is difficult to save money, but then life insurance will take away that problem because if you invest in a policy with an investment side, you will be prompted to save with your policy.

• To have peace of mind

One major element that life insurance will grant a person and their family would be the peace of mind. Having a life insurance policy would give you the reassurance that your family will be taken care of even after you pass away. You will be sure that your family will not go into financial hardship if you suddenly died. That is only for the death benefit. 

If you get a policy that includes a cash value, you will be able to borrow against that savings should you ever need the money. That is your money, after all. So you can take out some of the money you have saved, in case there would be an emergency. These are only examples of how life insurance can give you peace of mind.

• To ensure that your children can go to college

If you have children, you can choose to get an education rider for them. This would mean that part of the premiums that you pay would go toward saving for a college fund for them. 

Having life insurance is a way to make sure that you have a way to secure the future of your family. In many ways, a life insurance policy would grant peace of mind to people who choose to invest. At the end of the day, that is what everybody is looking for, to live a life free of worry and financial strain. Take out a life insurance policy today, and you will be one step closer to achieving that.

It is not uncommon to be interested in getting life insurance but then not know how to get started. This is why we have crafted this all-in-one guide for you, to help you get started on your life insurance policy.

What is life insurance?

Before anything else, we need to answer this question. Like insurance is more than just a simple cash benefit that a spouse will get after their significant other has passed away. Life insurance has come a long way from being just a death benefit. Life insurance can be a savings account, an investment, an emergency plan and so much more. 

What are your needs and goals?

The first step in getting life insurance would be to identify your goals, both short term and long term, for yourself and your family. Once you identify these goals, it will become much easier for you to decide what your life insurance policy is going to look like. 

Estimate how much those needs and goals will cost you.

The next step would be to make a budget that would show the total of all the goals you have identified. Estimating how much you would need would help you decide how much you should be getting for your life insurance plan. 

Talk to a trusted insurance adviser.

The next step would be to choose an insurance provider and talk to one of their insurance agents. There are many insurance companies that you can choose from these days, but then they would all offer similar packages, just with different names. Always make sure that you would be talking to an adviser who is affiliated with an insurance company.

It would be a good idea to talk about the details of your life insurance policy in the office of the insurance company, just to make sure that you are dealing with someone who is legitimately doing business for the company. In this day and age, you cannot just trust the word of people you meet, you will be paying for this policy, so you have to make sure you are dealing with an official member of the company.

Make your first payment on your policy.

Once you would be settled with the particulars in your policy, you will now be ready to start making payments. Your adviser will inform you how you can make the first payment, usually, it will be done over-the-counter at an affiliated bank, but then companies have different ways of accepting the first payment. 

Continue to make payments on your policy.

You can choose whether you will pay monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually. You will decide this at the beginning with your adviser. You can make payments at the bank or online, whichever you would prefer.

At this point, you will be ready for anything that life throws at you. Your life insurance policy can help you overcome financial problems such as emergencies and any unexpected expenses you might incur. Depending on the type of policy you have, you may be able to borrow against the amount that you have already saved, to pay for any unforeseen emergencies that come your way.

You can use life insurance as your ticket out of a bad situation. As long as you analyze what your needs are, you will be able to plan for your future well and be ready for it because of your life insurance policy. The first step is realizing that it is a need, for you and your family. Once you realize that it would be beneficial for you, follow the steps listed in this article and you will be on your way to a better and more secure future.

In the Philippines, it is not uncommon for people to think of retirement when they reach senior citizen age. This would be at 60 years old. But then is there really a right time to retire? Do you have to retire at 60 years old? Or can you retire before or after that age?

Some people would retire too early and end up outliving all their savings. On the other hand, many others would retire too late and by then, they would be too old to enjoy any of the money they had spent all their lives working for. So is there an age or time that would be just right for retirement?

Are we supposed to base our retirement on age or the amount of money we have in the bank? All these questions might be running in your head, and this article aims to calm your mind by trying to give a logical answer to all these questions.

Is there a right time to retire?
Society will urge people to retire at 60 years old. However, it is alright to retire a little earlier or later, depending on your situation, both financially and physically.

If you are regularly getting sick, feeling tired all the time and just physically unable to do the things you used to, it may be high time to consider retirement. Your financial status would also tell you if you would be able to retire earlier or not. If you already have enough money to spare, even before the age of 60, you can retire earlier. 

How life insurance can help you decide when to retire

Life insurance can be a big factor in providing a good retirement benefit. If you choose to invest early in your life for a retirement plan, you will already have enough money set aside for you to retire. There will be no need to worry about your finances because your life insurance policy would take care of that for you already.

Come your 40’s, your family responsibilities would already begin to be winding down, because all your children would typically be finished with school by this stage in your life, and they would probably be starting families of their own. This would be a good time when you can already start considering retirement. Look at your finances and health and use those to decide if you can still continue working until you are 60 years old.

When you reach your 50’s, you can retire already if you are financially ready. These would be called the “reward years” of your life, so you have to make sure that you have enough money to live a comfortable life even if your income would already stop coming in.

Having a pension plan would be a good investment because you would be able to receive a monthly cash benefit after you retire. If you have also been covered by SSS or GSIS by your work, you would have your pension plan to add to this. These cash benefits would replace the salary you will no longer receive.

You may also have saved enough money and time to be able to invest in the stock market when you choose to retire. No matter what age you choose to do so, as long as you have enough money, you will be able to live comfortably. There is no wrong or right age for retirement, and if you invest early in your life in a life insurance policy that includes a retirement plan, you need not wait for the age of 60 to think about retirement because you will have enough money to retire earlier.

Filipinos are getting more keen to invest in life insurance in 2019. Many people are quickly coming to the realization that life insurance is a need. However, many people do not really know why.

What is life insurance?

The most basic part of any life insurance plan would be the death benefit. This would be the compensation that your family would receive when you die. This component is present in any type of insurance plan. But what more does it have to offer?

Life insurance should be put in place to ensure that the surviving relatives and beneficiaries will be able to continue life free from debt and financial strain even after the policy holder (who is most of the time the sole breadwinner) dies.

Life insurance will allow the family members to grieve in peace, because they will not be worried about where to get the money for a decent funeral and memorial service for their lost family member.

Life insurance will also cover the income that was lost because of the death or sudden disability of the breadwinner. Many people do not account for these costs and if there is no life insurance plan in place, the results of this miscalculation can be grave.

Families could lose their house because they are unable to continue paying for rent or payments for their housing loan. They could put themselves in serious financial risk because they would need to borrow money because the breadwinner would be gone. These are the small reasons why life insurance would be very important for a family.

Tips on getting the most out of your life insurance investment

Check your health. 

The trick to getting a good price for your premiums (these are the incremental payments you pay for your life insurance policy) is to start your investment while you would be healthy. Insurance companies would put a much more expensive price on your premiums if they know that you have an illness.

This is why you would be starting your investment while you are healthy would give you much more value for your money. Bear in mind that once you have started paying for your policy, should you suddenly be diagnosed with an illness later on, your premium price will not go up.

Note: insurance companies sometimes refuse to take in clients who already have a chronic illness at the time of starting the investment.

Get a policy you can afford. 

Some people agree to very high premium prices at the beginning only to find out that they will not be able to continue to make payments later on because they cannot afford it in the long run. 

Note: It is more advisable to sign a policy that you are sure that you can continue paying for, and if you would like to “top up” or add to your premium payments when you have the extra money to spare, you can do so. But it is important that you start with an amount that you can continue paying for 

Pick your riders according to what your needs are.

Many policy riders will be available for you to gain the most out of your life insurance policy. Riders like waiver of premium, accidental disability, and education assurance would be available. Just ask your insurance agent about all the available riders so that your insurance will cover everything you need (and everything your family needs in case you die.)

Note: You can customize your riders, most people just rely on what their financial adviser will tell them. But it would be a good idea to do advance research to see what your family needs, what kind of lifestyle you currently have and make a list of all of these so that you can discuss with your life insurance agent or financial adviser to see what riders would be the most advisable for your family.

They say that in this world, nothing is constant. The only constant thing is change. This is why, with your ever-changing life, there will come a time when you would need life insurance. This will be for your financial security and the security of your family as well.

Top signs you would need life insurance

You are a parent

The main reason why people would need life insurance would be because they are the breadwinner of the family. In the olden days of life insurance, people would only get a life insurance package because they want to be able to provide a cash benefit to their family in case something happens to them.

Nowadays, you can get so many additional benefits with your life insurance policy. You can get a benefit that can go toward paying your child’s tuition fee.

You have had an increase in income

Another reason why people would get life insurance in the Philippines would be because they would use the cash benefit to replace their income in case of their death or disability. If there has been a significant change in your salary, especially if you have taken out a life insurance policy before, check that the cash benefit will be enough to cover the changes in your salary in case anything happens.

You have bought a new home

In 2019, more and more affordable housing schemes are coming out. This means that more families are now able to afford to buy their own homes. The rent-to-own scheme is something very popular nowadays. If you have just started paying for your own house, you need to have a life insurance policy in place to prevent your family from being evicted in case anything were to happen to you.

You have had a change in lifestyle

In connection to the salary, upgrade comes lifestyle changes. You might be spending so much lately, going on vacations and buying new gadgets for your family. Check that you have a life insurance policy that can still cover this kind of lifestyle in case of any emergency.

You can also update your existing policy if you have one. If your insurance company will not allow changes to be made to the policy you already have, it would be possible to buy a supplementary insurance policy to cover the changes.

Your family has a history of chronic illness

If you are aware that your family has a medical history of chronic diseases, while you are young, healthy and able, you need to take out a life insurance policy as soon as you can. Insurance policy premium prices would shoot up the moment you are diagnosed with a disease and would usually come cheaper for healthy people. 

These are the most common reasons why you should get a life insurance policy. We would never know when the next change in our lives would be. It is just best that we are prepared for any emergencies that might happen.

A life insurance policy is the best way to make sure you and your family are financially ready to face any of these problems. Whatever you choose to do, take all the necessary precautions to make sure that the people you love are taken care of.

This is not a bad thing. After all, you work to be able to reward yourself after a long day. Right? We all deserve a break sometimes.

Giving yourself a treat is not wrong. At the end of the day, you worked hard for that money and you have the right to decide how you spend it. The problem is many people take too many breaks, and invest in all the wrong things.

A shiny new smartphone can look good in your hands now, but then in a few months, that phone will no longer be the latest model, and you might find yourself wanting to invest in the new latest phone.

Investing in Life Insurance can solve many problems

Saving for the future. A life insurance policy will make it a “no-brainer” for you to save money. It will just be like any other expenses that we pay each month. The amount that is paid in an insurance policy will be decided by the policyholder, so you will not be paying for something that you cannot afford. At the end of a certain amount of time, you will be surprised to see how much you have already saved!

Having an investment. Many people think that for you to have an investment, you need to have a lot of money. This is not always true. You do not have to buy a Jollibee franchise to “invest” your money.

Work with what money you can afford to set aside, and that will be your investment. In a few years of investing in your life insurance policy, you will see that a little goes a long way.

Emergency funds. This is what most Filipinos have a hard time with. Most of our budgets are fixed, and when an emergency suddenly presents itself, the whole budget is blown to smithereens. Many Filipino families do not have a fund that they can reach into when a family member goes to the hospital, or when an unexpected school expense would come up.

A life insurance policy will provide a solution to this conundrum. Life insurance also includes coverage for medical expenses and emergency funds.

You will be able to dip into some of the money you have set aside and withdraw it when there is a sudden need for cash. There will be no more need to borrow money from your neighbor or to pawn your wedding ring. Your insurance policy will take care of this.

Life insurance is one of the most important investments you can choose to make

The best thing about this investment is that you get to make all the decisions about your policy. You can be sure that only you will decide what you pay for, as well as the price you pay for it. You will not regret getting a life insurance plan because it is the answer to all your budgeting problems.

For a small premium every month, you will still be able to buy your wants. Do you still want those new shoes? Go ahead and buy them! What about that new restaurant you and your wife have been dying to try? You can still enjoy a date! Why?

This is because you will already have set money aside in your life insurance plan. This money will go to your future, without affecting how much you can enjoy today.