How To Get Life Insurance Quotes Online

Get Your Instant Whole life and Term Life Insurance Quotes

A man wearing a business suit, carrying the requisite leather briefcase, is walking along a busy sidewalk with a stride showing great purpose – he is a character in a TV ad for a life insurance company. A timely flashback to a breakfast table shows us that he has a charming wife, who is clearly devoted to the four small children scattered around said table. She is not wearing a business suit but a t-shirt and jeans, there is no smart briefcase resting on a kitchen counter, waiting to be grabbed at the last minute as she heads out the door to the office. No, this is a stay-at-home mom. And it is not difficult to imagine that if her spiffily dressed husband were to meet an untimely and doubly unfortunate death, things would get difficult very quickly. This is why they desperately need to get life insurance quotes.

We all fervently hope that young families like these stay together and intact for a long, long time. But unpredictable things do happen on this planet, and sometimes this means that some of us depart it earlier than our loved ones would hope, leaving broken hearts in our wake. The dark vacuum that remains behind when a loved one dies takes time and courage to confront. Financial difficulties can turn tragic circumstances into the unbearable – in fact, no longer having the financial means to keep up the standard of living a family knows can seem, well, insurmountable as a problem.

Thus we have life insurance. Though many jokes – some of them quite funny – are made about the callousness that propels the typical life insurance sales person forward, we do know that a loved one who is left behind is much better off, is in a far more favorable circumstance, if she does not have to worry about money, or even burdensome debt.

Do you need life insurance? That said, not everyone needs life insurance – and the first question that must be answered when one is considering buying life insurance is whether it is necessary. Financial reporters like Kathy Kristoff of CBS News advise that only people who have dependents or considerable debt truly need life insurance. A young single woman with no dependents, carrying little debt, need not budget for a monthly life insurance policy payment. However, a young women who takes care of her children while her husband works outside of the home should look into life insurance, as her children would need to be cared for if she unexpectedly died – and this would cost money. Every individual must evaluate her situation and decide if buying life insurance is necessary in her case. If it is, then, before shopping around on the Internet, there is some homework to be done. (Isn’t there always homework to be done?)

Said homework

If you have determined that you do need life insurance, you must determine how much, before you start shopping online. This means taking a realistic look at your current financial situation. Here is one way to go about determining how much life insurance to go shopping for:

There are as many situations as can be imagined when thinking about how much life insurance one might need. Let’s think about it this way. The person who is going to insure her life has financial obligations that it will be difficult for a surviving person to meet. How much money does the person to be insured provide for dependents, annually? How much could the survivor potentially provide? The difference between these two numbers will be your starting number. When it has been determined how much money would be needed if a provider dies, then calculate the number of years this money will be needed.

Things change in life, children grow up, university graduates get jobs, and so on. In basic terms then, the gap between what the provider earns and the survivor could earn, multiplied by the number of years that this money is required gives you a starting number. You do need to add any outstanding debts to this number. And, even then, you are not finished. The last thing you should do, according to most financial advisors, is to round up this number to the next quarter of a million dollars. This is simply because you want to make sure that the survivors are financially secure and this means a cushion against the unexpected.

You are almost but not quite ready to sit at your computer

You know, roughly, how much life insurance you need. Now, you need to know that there are two basic kinds of life insurance policies for individuals: whole life and term. In a nutshell, term life insurance has a time limit attached to it – the most popular term length is twenty years, though a term can be as short as one year. Whole life, as the name implies, is a life insurance policy that is structured to last for your entire lifetime. Whole life insurance is expensive in the early years, though costs are reduced in later years. It so is not generally a recommended choice for most people as the costs in the initial years is prohibitive. Financial advisors will generally tell you that if you have a special situation, like a disabled dependent or a family-owned business, that a whole life insurance policy may be the way to go. But if you don’t have any special requirements, a term policy is the better way forward.

You are ready to sit at your computer

It is now time to involve the Internet in this quest to find a worthy life insurance policy. The American Council of Life Insurers tells us that that average individual life insurance policy taken out in 2010 was for 165, 291 USD. Let us assume that you, reader, are average. (Of course, only in this rather unimportant way. But this goes without saying!)

If we round up slightly, for the simple convenience of ease of typing, to 200,000 USD, we can do an experiment to check whether recommended online brokers will give us similar quotes.

Kathy Kristoff of CBS News, mentioned above, wrote an article about life insurance in September of 2009. In this article, she recommended three online insurance brokers: Acuquote, Insweb, and Insure.com. Lets’s take the first one, Acuquote and compare it to Geico. (You know, the insurance company that runs those ads with the super cute Gecko, and proclaims to be able to save you money on your insurance if you spend only fifteen minutes of your time? Those guys.)

Is a rose by any other name still as sweet?

Or, in other words, do all online insurance brokers give you exactly the same information? It turns out that they do not. Using the same basic factors (amount of requested policy, age, sex, and location) in a quick search showed differences. Here are the basic results, just so you can see how wide said differences are.

Based on a 20-year term 200,000 USD policy, Acuquote presented options between 44.93 and 85.40 USD per month; Geico put forward offers between 37.92 and 290.30 and a third broker, American Term, put up quotations from 23.92 to 38.00 USD per month. So, there are fairly significant differences in quotes.

This information is important because knowledge is power. Friends might tell you –surely you have friends that have given you similar words of wisdom – that “all insurance companies are the same, they will all offer you the same quotes.” A simple research project as of the time of writing this article has shown that, at least when it comes to providing quotes, there is some variation out there in cyberspace. So what is the best path forward? How can you use the Internet as a smart tool to get you the life insurance you want?

Again, do your homework

Yes, the “h” word comes up again. Life is busy and most people, frankly, do not take the time to shop around for insurance. And, of course, finding an online broker that seems to have access to reasonable rates is important. So how should you do this?

The top five approach

If cost is a primary concern for you, here is one approach that you can take online to ensure that you end up paying a good rate. Do a simple search in your go-to search engine, be it Google or no, for “life insurance brokers”. Choose 20 of the list that comes up – selecting names that you are familiar with, if possible. Now, you have a little work to do, but it will not take very long.

Visit each website, give them the minimum amount of information that they will allow, and get a quote for a 20-year limited policy. Make a note of the lowest and the highest quote for all twenty sites. Pick your top five for cost. This is your short list: the list from which you will choose a policy.

Now that you have your top 5 insurance companies

You are now seated at your computer with a list of five life insurance brokers whose prices you can live with (pun intended). What is the next step? Make a note of the actual insurers that offer the lower prices at each site. (So, the insurance company that will actually underwrite your policy, not the broker who will find you a good deal.)

You do want to make sure that the reasonably priced life insurance quotes online comes from an insurance company with a solid reputation. The insurance sector is rife with dodgy suppliers and you want to avoid future annoyances and difficulties. So, how do you check these guys out?

Consumer watchdogs and government insurance agencies

If you live in America or Canada, your state or province has government agencies that are responsible for overseeing the insurance market – its brokers and agencies. If you have an insurance company that you want to sign up with, you can contact the appropriate department for your location and ask for any information that can be provided about the company you are considering. At the very least, they can tell you if the insurer is licensed to offer insurance in the place of your residence.

Along with government oversight, there are consumer agencies like “Better Business Bureaus” that will have records of any complaints and attached resolutions pertaining to the company that you are considering.

Get by with a little help from your friends

If you know and trust someone who deals with insurance for a living, give her a call and run the name of your first choice of an insurance dealer past her. She will likely give you a yay or nay, or at least tell you if they are a major player or not.

Feeling a little uncertain?

If you, at the end of your Internet research project, feel uncertain in any way about your result, don’t proceed. Signing up for a term life insurance plan should be something you feel secure about; you are likely feeling unsure for a good reason, even if you can’t quite out your finger on what exactly it is. If you think that you have found the best financial deal, but cannot confirm that this is a solid firm, there are actions that you can take online.

Just how is the life insurance company doing financially?

As a consumer who is dependent upon a payout of funds should the very unfortunate befall you, you want to know that your insurance company is in the very best of fiscal health. And the Internet can help you find out how your company is doing. Simply go to insure.com and enter the name of your preferred insurance company into the search box labeled “Insurance Company Ratings Look-up”. This search will return Standard and Poor’s rating for said insurance company. The ratings are a letter grade and a common recommendation in the insurance field is that you choose an insurance company that has an A, AA, or AAA rating. Hopefully, your first choice matches up. If not, your homework has not been done for naught. Read on.

Bargain for the best life insurance quotes no medical exam

If you want to deal with a company that has a high Standard and Poor Rating, choose five of them and get an online quotation from all. Choose the most reasonable rate and contact the company, making available other rates that you have been quoted and asking for a similar deal. You may find that the company is willing to offer you some incentive for signing up with them. The likelihood is that you will get a deal that is fairly close to what you want.

This article goes through how the Internet can help you in your quest to find comprehensive life insurance at a rate that won’t sink your household budget. In unsure financial times, it is important that we all get our individual financial houses in order. There is no doubt that an unexpected death cannot only bring heartbreak but financial ruin to a family. So, let’s review the best advise on how to get where you want to be.

First, you have to determine if you actually need life insurance, because if you don’t, your money can be used in other ways that could benefit your financial health. If you find yourself among the majority of citizens for whom life insurance is necessary, you must determine how much is required. This is a particularly important step as having a life insurance policy that takes care of only some of the obligations a loved one leaves behind is an unfortunate, and all too common, scenario.

Armed with the knowledge that you do indeed need a life insurance policy of a calculated amount, you need to decide whether it should be a term or whole life policy. All but those in special circumstances, for example, having a disabled dependent or a family-owned business, are generally more suited to a term policy.

Whole Life Vs Term Life Insurance

That you should shop around for an insurance policy is the anchoring idea behind this article. Most consumers, to their financial detriment, do not spend adequate time shopping for a life insurance policy. Geico, in their clever ads, practically beg us to take 15 minutes to look into whether we could be paying less for term life insurance premiums. Consumers spend more time choosing a pair of shoes than an insurance broker. So, we should all wise up, roll up our sleeves, take out a pencil and a note pad, and spend some quality time with our friend the Internet to compare term life and whole life insurance quotes. We, along with our loved ones, will benefit in the end.

And, last but not least, ensuring that our choice of car insurance company is doing well financially is essential to our piece of mind. There would be few things more horrific than paying insurance premiums for years only to find that a bankruptcy had gutted the insurance company funds leavings its customers in the lurch.

There we have it: a sensible approach to finding life insurance quotes online. Sure, it will take some time, though, it must be said, it will be time well spent.

References:
http://www.benefits.va.gov/insurance/ 
http://www.opm.gov/insure/life/tribes/fegli.asp
http://www.usa.gov/topics/health/insurance/disability-life.shtml
http://www.mass.gov/anf/employee-insurance-and-retirement-benefits/employee-health-and-other-insurance-benefits/life-insurance-and-accidental-death/basic-and-optional-life-insurance/