Life Insurance
Four products that all pay a death benefit, bought for four completely different reasons. The useful question is never which one is best — it is which job you are trying to do.
Life insurance is sold with more fog than almost anything else we handle, most of it generated on purpose. These pages are written to burn it off: what each product actually is, what it costs you to own, and the circumstances in which you should not buy it.
If you only read one line: match the product to how long the need lasts. A need with an end date wants term. A need that never ends wants permanent coverage. Almost every expensive mistake in this category is a mismatch between those two.
The four products
Burial Insurance
Small-face whole life insurance bought to cover a funeral and the bills that arrive with it. The industry calls it final expense life insurance; buyers call it burial insurance.
Worth a look if you want to cover a funeral without leaving the bill to your family.
Term Life Insurance
A death benefit for a fixed number of years, at the lowest cost per dollar of coverage of any life product. Bought when someone depends on your income and the need has an end date.
Worth a look if someone depends on your income and you can name roughly when that stops being true.
Whole Life Insurance
Permanent coverage with a guaranteed death benefit, a guaranteed level premium and a guaranteed cash value schedule. The guarantees are the product, and they are what you pay for.
Worth a look if the need genuinely never ends and you can sustain the premium for decades.
Indexed Universal Life Insurance
Universal life whose interest credit is linked to the movement of a market index, limited by a cap or participation rate and protected by a floor. Flexible, genuinely complicated, and the most aggressively marketed life product there is.
Worth a look if you want permanent coverage with flexibility and will actually read the illustration.
Work out what you need
How Much Life Insurance Do I Need?
A two-minute needs analysis from your own obligations rather than a multiple of salary. Visible arithmetic, and no email needed to see the result.
How Much Burial Insurance Do I Need?
Works from an actual funeral price list rather than a round number. If the answer is smaller than you expected, buy the smaller policy.
How Much Permanent Coverage Do I Need?
Separates the part of your need that never ends from the part that does. Everything it leaves out is cheaper as term.
Is Indexed Universal Life Right for Me?
Six questions and a blunt verdict. Not a projection — any IUL projection needs a crediting rate, and that is an illustrated rate.
Three questions that decide it
Answer these and the product chooses itself. Almost every expensive mistake in this category is a mismatch between how long the need lasts and how long the policy lasts.
How long does the need last?
Until the mortgage is clear or the children are grown — that is term. For as long as you live — that is whole life, indexed universal life, or burial insurance if the amount is small.
How much certainty do you want?
Whole life guarantees the death benefit, the premium and a cash value schedule in the contract. Indexed universal life guarantees far less and gives you flexibility and index-linked crediting in exchange.
How is your health?
Fully underwritten policies cost less per dollar. Burial insurance relaxes the underwriting and charges for it — which is worth it if you need it, and a waste if you do not. Ask to be quoted both ways.
Who we are appointed with
We are independent and appointed with the life insurance companies below. Which of them we would approach for you depends on the product, your age, your state and your health history — underwriting differs sharply between companies, and that is the practical reason for working with someone who can approach more than one.
- Aetna
- Allianz Life
- American-Amicable Life
- Americo
- Ameritas
- Assurity
- Athene
- AuguStar Financial
- Banner Life
- Brighthouse Financial
- Cincinnati Life
- Columbus Life
- Corebridge Financial
- Equitable
- EquiTrust Life
- F&G Life
- Foresters Financial
- Gerber Life
- Guarantee Trust Life (GTL)
- John Hancock
- Lafayette Life
- Liberty Bankers Life
- Lincoln Financial Group
- Manhattan Life
- MassMutual
- Mutual of Omaha
- Mutual Trust Life
- National Life Group (Life Insurance Company of the Southwest)
- National Western Life
- Nationwide
- New York Life
- North American Company for Life and Health
- OneAmerica
- Pacific Life
- Petersen International Underwriters (Lloyd's of London)
- Principal
- Protective Life
- Prudential
- Royal Neighbors of America
- Sagicor Life
- SBLI
- Securian Financial (Minnesota Life)
- Security Mutual Life
- Symetra
- Transamerica
- William Penn Life
- Zurich
Being appointed with a company does not mean that company offers every product on this page, and we do not represent every insurer. Which company suits you depends on the product, your age, your state and your health history. We publish no benefit, rate or feature for any company here until we can cite it to that company's own current material.
Servicing only — not available for new business
We can help with an existing policy from this company — reviewing it or understanding what you already own. We are not appointed to write new business with it, so a new policy would be placed with one of the companies above.
- Genworth
Not sure which of these applies to you?
Tell us how to reach you and roughly what you are trying to do. A licensed agent calls back, usually the same business day.