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I finally retired and I am loosing my company paid life insurance. I have a whole life policy since 1974, but its a small amount ($20k). What are folks doing to provide life insurance during their retirement years? I only have a small home mortgage for debt and wife and 3 adult children and 5 grand children. Do you all try to cover your debt and final expenses with Life Insurance or do you just let your reserves cover it all.
I am 47 and have been thinking about canceling our life insurance policies and investing it instead. I have more than enough in savings to cover all of my debt should anything happen, so Im not worried about that. In fact I called the insurance company that holds my policy and they said the rate of interest is much greater in a money market account than what I am currently accruing and the only down side of canceling is if I died sooner than later because no one would receive the lump sum. My mother has roughly the same as you do for her life insurance policy and I have told her to pull it out and put it into a high yield savings account instead. SHe has no debt and this way it will at least be accruing interest.
We dropped our L.I. once the kids were grown and on their own. No need to have L.I. in retirement, as the possibility of catastrophic loss of income to support the family is gone.
What about not buying any insurance, if you don't have a financial need to cover?
What is the time frame needed to break even, if you invest the money you would not spend on insurance vs the insurance pay-out amount?
it is impossible to say because we don’t know our future outcome without running like pfau did 10,000 different outcomes .
i have no annuities, don’t need them and i have a 250k universal life policy which has fed its self off cash value for decades .
which at this point if it runs out of internal cash i will likely pay the 2k a year since i’m 71 at this point .
it is for all our kids since my wife and i are leaving every thing to each other and being a second marriage i want all the kids to get something up front before the second to die
it is for all our kids since my wife and i are leaving every thing to each other and being a second marriage i want all the kids to get something up front before the second to die
I wish we got whole life back in our thirties. Don't laugh, but we had term insurance. Once the kids were grown, we cancelled it. My husband called one of those places that claim to buy insurance policies. Our term life policies were worthless after paying in for thirty years.
My husband has $25,000 life insurance paid by his employer. I'll use it for his burial - if he goes first.
I think for second marriages whole life insurance makes a lot of sense. It probably would have made sense for us too. C'est la vie!
Quote:
Originally Posted by kbrkr
I finally retired and I am loosing my company paid life insurance. I have a whole life policy since 1974, but its a small amount ($20k). What are folks doing to provide life insurance during their retirement years? I only have a small home mortgage for debt and wife and 3 adult children and 5 grand children. Do you all try to cover your debt and final expenses with Life Insurance or do you just let your reserves cover it all.
If my husband dies, I'll get his higher amount of social security. His social security amount pays for our housing/car/insurance expenses. We withdraw a minimal amount from his 401K/IRA for other expenses like travel.
If you and your wife need both your social security checks to survive, life insurance might make sense. If she (or you) can survive on one social security (lost of the other check), I wouldn't bother with life insurance.
However, after fifty years of paying for life insurance, if the premiums are low enough, why not keep it? $20,000 is the cost of a burial.
Last edited by YorktownGal; 03-08-2024 at 08:17 AM..
If you are not the source of earnings without which your family would be in hardship, there is no reason to buy life insurance FOR THE PURPOSE OF INSURING YOUR LIFE.
However, people with large assets often buy insurance (usually ”whole life”) as a means of protecting them against lawsuits (think doctors and malpractice suits) since life insurance is more protected against lawsuits than cash or liquid assets. If that's not your situation whole life is a lousy investment because basically they take your money, invest it in the same things you could invest it in, except they use some of it to provide a not very good life insurance policy (which, if you're 68, retired, and not earning money, you don't need anyway). Fix your Social Security and pension (if any) for 100% joint survivorship so if you die before your beneficiary the benefits will continue at the same level.
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I have the option of continuing my employer provided policy but it was 1-1/2 times my ending annual salary when working, and after retirement the maximum is only $25,000. With our IRA converted from our 401 and 457 accounts, plus full survivorship pension hopefully whichever of us goes second will do OK. The premiums on new policies after age 60 are very high, and we are more likely to have medical issues. There are some available at reasonable cost with no health questions but typically only for small benefits, like $10,000.
I wish we got whole life back in our thirties. Don't laugh, but we had term insurance. Once the kids were grown, we cancelled it. My husband called one of those places that claim to buy insurance policies. Our term life policies were worthless after paying in for thirty years.
My husband has $25,000 life insurance paid by his employer. I'll use it for his burial - if he goes first.
I think for second marriages whole life insurance makes a lot of sense. It probably would have made sense for us too. C'est la vie!
If my husband dies, I'll get his higher amount of social security. His social security amount pays for our housing/car/insurance expenses. We withdraw a minimal amount from his 401K/IRA for other expenses like travel.
If you and your wife need both your social security checks to survive, life insurance might make sense. If she (or you) can survive on one social security (lost of the other check), I wouldn't bother with life insurance.
However, after fifty years of paying for life insurance, if the premiums are low enough, why not keep it? $20,000 is the cost of a burial.
less then 2% of all term policies are paid out on .
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