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How are annuities different from life insurance?

Both annuities and life insurance should be considered in your long-term financial plan. While both include death benefits, you buy life insurance in the event you die too soon and an annuity in case you live too long. In other words, life insurance provides economic protection to your loved ones if you die before your financial obligations to them are met, while annuities guard against outliving your assets.

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realLIFEstories

A realLIFEstory is exactly what it sounds like. It is a true story that illustrates why it’s so important for people to include insurance in their financial plans.

In this section, you’ll find dozens of compelling stories. None of these individuals and families featured in these stories could have anticipated the challenges they’d face. In each case, however, smart insurance planning ensured that emotional struggles weren’t compounded by financial hardship.

As much as we’d all like to think that “it’ll never happen to me,” the reality is that none of us knows what the future holds. We encourage you to watch our videos and think about how you and your family would manage financially if faced with similar challenges. If you’ve got an unmet need for insurance, then you should address it. Your family’s financial future is too important to leave to chance.

       Life Insurance for Individuals

       Life Insurance for Business

       Disability Insurance

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How should I organize and store my life insurance records?

The last thing you want to happen after you die is for your beneficiaries to be unable to locate and submit a claim on your life insurance. To prevent this, you should have copies of your life insurance records in at least two places. This is to make it less likely that you’ll lose them (to fire, flood, accidental discarding, etc.) and more likely that, after your death, your beneficiaries will find them.

What information should I keep?
For each individual life insurance policy on your life, you should record the following information:

   • The full name of the life insurance company that issued the policy
   • The city and state of the home office of the company that issued the policy
   • The name and U.S. headquarters of the group, if the issuing company belongs to a group of
     companies
   • The policy number
   • The date the policy was issued
   • The amount of the death benefit
   • The name and address of the agent/broker who sold you the policy
   • The type of policy (e.g., term, whole life, etc.)
   • The location of the original life insurance policy

You might have life insurance automatically from your employer. 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 your union or trade association or other group you belong to (such as a college alumni association or an automobile club). For each of these life insurance benefits, you should record the following information:

   • The name of the employer or group that sponsors the insurance
   • The office or person to contact when it’s time to file a claim
   • The certificate number (comparable to the policy number under an individual policy)
   • The date the insurance was started
   • The amount of the death benefit

Sometimes financial programs that are mainly designed for income or other purposes have death benefits as additional features. This might include pensions, annuities, workers compensation programs, disability insurance, travel accident insurance, etc. For each such program, you should record the following information:

   • The type of policy that has a death benefit as part of its features
   • The full name of the life insurance company that issued the policy
   • The city and state of the home office of the company that issued the policy
   • The policy number
   • The date the policy was issued
   • The amount of the death benefit
   • The name and address of the agent/broker who sold you the policy
   • The location of the original insurance policy

Credit cards and lending institutions may offer life insurance to pay off your outstanding loans in the event of your death. For each life insurance benefit on your life dedicated to paying off a loan, you should record

   • The full name of the lending institution through which you obtained the life insurance
   • The loan number and issue date of the loan
   • The name of the person or office to contact when it’s time to file a claim
   • The policy number of the life insurance policy that pays off the loan

Where should I keep the information?
Keep one set of these records in your home, in a place where others who need this information are likely to find it (and after you put the information there, tell the people who’ll need it where it is). This might be with your other financial records (such as income tax, checking account, investment records), with your other legal papers (such as a copy of your will, living will, health care proxy, etc.), or anywhere your survivors are likely to look for them.

Keep another set of these records “off site”—that is, outside of your home, perhaps in a safe deposit box, or with a professional or a relative who can be counted on to produce them when they’re needed.

On each page, record the date on which the information was last updated. That way, if the copy in your home differs from the one in the safe deposit box, it’s easy to tell which is the more current.

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Preserve Life’s Wondrous Moments with Life Insurance

We live for life’s wondrous moments…

From simple pleasures like enjoying quality time with loved ones to major milestones such as seeing your child graduate or walk down the wedding aisle, these are the moments we cherish most. You work hard to make sure your loved ones have a comfortable life, and hopefully one that includes its fair share of wondrous moments. But if you were suddenly out of the picture, would your loved ones have the same opportunities and quality of life? Life insurance helps ensure that the lifestyle you’ve worked so hard to achieve for your loved ones won’t come to a halt if something were to happen to you.

Time to review your life insurance needs

We all to hope to live a long life, but statistically some of us won’t have that opportunity. Each year, roughly 465,000 Americans will die prematurely, leaving behind loved ones who will have to manage financially in their absence. If you were to die prematurely, would your family be financially secure or would life become a struggle? Life insurance can help take the guesswork out of this question. It helps ensure that the hopes and dreams you have for your family won’t die when you do.

So how do you know if you have enough life insurance? A good place to start is with the
Life Insurance Needs Calculator offered by the nonprofit LIFE Foundation. It can provide you with a general sense of how much insurance is right for you. Your next step should be to talk to an insurance professional in your community or your benefits manager at work for a more detailed examination of your needs.

The Seven Wonders of Life Insurance

Many people associate life insurance with helping to meet very basic needs like paying for a funeral and other final expenses. If you plan properly, life insurance can meet these needs and so much more. Read on to learn about seven amazing things that life insurance can do for families at their time of greatest need. Life insurance can…

1. Buy time
Allows loved ones to focus on their grief by helping to pay for the funeral and other final expenses.

2. Provide a fresh start
Lets loved ones start with a clean slate by helping to pay off credit card bills, outstanding loans and even the mortgage. 


3. Generate income
Helps replace lost income for years to come so that surviving family members can continue to pay for life’s necessities.

4. Offer flexibility
Gives a surviving spouse the chance to take time off from work or to switch to a job that offers a more flexible work schedule.

5. Create opportunities
Can provide funding to start a business, or pay for schooling so surviving family members can train for a new career.


6. Fund the future
Offers a way to fund longer-range goals like a college education for the kids or a secure retirement for a surviving spouse.

7. Leave a legacy
Gives parents the chance to leave future generations with the legacy of long-term financial security.

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Escaped Otters Delay Ohio-Bound Flight

Workers captured animals, returned them to cages on Continental flight

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Passengers on a Continental Airlines flight couldn’t believe it when they saw an otter scurry from the plane’s cargo hold and onto the tarmac at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The daring escape by a pair of otters delayed the Ohio-bound flight for about an hour Tuesday night.

One passenger said that most on board thought the delay was a joke at first. But another said they watched one of the otters scurry across the tarmac.

Airport workers managed to catch the otters and return them to their cages and the flight took off for Columbus.

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