If you’re over 50, life insurance is still important — and it’s not too late! Here’s everything you need to know about life insurance for over 50, what are the challenges, and how you can still secure a policy.
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Life Insurance For Over 50: What You Need to Know
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There’s a lot of things that are easier to get done when you are young. Prime among them? Getting an affordable life insurance policy. These policies can be relatively cheap and easy to get when you’re in your younger years and still in strong health. However, life insurance policies can be much more difficult to obtain once you get older, and your health and age can become liabilities instead of advantages.
And yet, many people don’t make the decision to get life insurance at a young age. Is there a time when it becomes too late to get a good policy? What are the challenges of getting insurance at an older age?
Read on, and our guest author will walk you through what you need to know about life insurance for people over 50.
Why Life Insurance Is Still Worth It
Life insurance can be a breeze to secure when you’re in your twenties or even your thirties.
Often, however, young people don’t have the money available to invest in such a policy over a long period of time. They also might not yet have families and dependents that they want to leave money and a sense of security for.
It’s easy to reach your 50s and realize you don’t have a way to ensure that your family is safe and secure after you go. This is especially true if you had children late or found a steady career later in your life. You might not have a nest egg built up that can weather your family through medical emergencies or sudden unemployment.
No matter what age you are, life insurance can offer you an amazing peace-of-mind. You can rest assured that no matter what happens to you, your family will be protected and taken care of after you are gone.
Life insurance policies work very similarly to other forms of insurance: you pay monthly or yearly premiums to the insurance company, and in return, they pay out a large sum to your family upon the event of your death.
The importance of a life insurance policy only increases as you get older and you have more in your life that you care for.
Is Life Insurance For Over 50 Possible?
When you get into your later years, life insurance becomes much more expensive. This is just an unfortunate but logical truth of insurance. The older you get, the closer you are to death, and thus are more expensive to insure.
There are two types of insurance you can secure. They are term and whole life insurance. Term insurance is more affordable but only covers you for a set ‘term,’ such as ten or twenty years. Whole life insurance, on the other hand, never expires. But it will cost you much more than a term insurance plan.
In fact, getting a whole life insurance plan once you reach your fifties can be astronomically expensive.
Securing term insurance can be much more reasonable. A limited-term means that an insurance company can gamble on the fact that you might not die within the term and that they won’t have to pay—this helps to keep costs lower.
It’s important to find a life insurance policy that you can afford, but still offers the terms you want. There’s no point in paying for insurance if the payout is going to be a negligible help to your family.
Factors That Affect Your Premium Costs
When it comes to the cost of life insurance, there are various factors that will determine how much you might have to pay. Your age is the most obvious of these.
Once you reach fifty, the cost of life insurance will likely increase every year. That’s all the more reason to act now instead of waiting for later. The policy you’re looking at now might triple in cost by the time you turn sixty.
Your personal health is also a huge factor when it comes to setting premiums. When you apply for a life insurance policy, you’ll need to go in for a full medical evaluation by an insurance-approved doctor.
Evidence of medical ailments or health issues that could lead to death will drive your premiums way up. If you’re a smoker, your premiums will likely be raised as well, due to the health issues often involved. Your family medical history will also be a factor.
Life insurance companies have created a number of different risk profiles that they might classify you in after you examination.
These different profiles have different costs associated with them and will be one of the main factors in determining how expensive your policy will be. Learn more about underwriting and risk profiles to determine how you might be affected.
Not every insurance company will give you the same price for a plan. It’s a very good idea to shop around and find the insurance company that will give you the best deal on a policy that you like.
Leaving Safety and Security For Your Family
No one likes having to think about their own mortality. And yet, all of our time on this Earth is limited. At some point, we will all go.
It’s better to plan for such an event now rather than later, and understanding life insurance for people over 50 can help make sure you are prepared for when the end happens. Proper preparation can leave behind a safe and secure future for your family and those most important to you.
Want more tips for living the second half of your life?
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