4 important questions to ask about life insurance

You’re working hard for your money and you’d like your family to enjoy the fruits of your labor throughout the coming years. Preparing for your family’s future, however, means more than investing appropriately in order to achieve the right combination of growth and stability for your goals and time horizon. For many people, it also involves purchasing the right amount of life insurance during their working years.

Life insurance can help mitigate the financial impact on your loved ones in the event of your death. With a life insurance policy, your family can use the proceeds to help replace lost income, eliminate debt, pay for college, keep a business afloat, or address other financial needs and goals while they adjust to a new life.

How to Find Affordable Life Insurance

Affordable life insurance is readily available everywhere. The question is finding the right policy for you through understanding the insurance that you're getting. Even with its affordability, cheap insurance need not be of substandard quality.

Insurance Company

With the unpredictable economy, it's important to choose an insurance company that has been in service for a long time.  Longevity is essential because it is a factor that tells you if a company has survived previous economic troubles. 

Ask Questions

Don't be afraid to ask agents about the insurance policy terms that you want to purchase. If you can, list all the questions you want to ask so as not to leave out some that are important to you. You can also do your own research on life insurance policies to give you a general idea on what terms you would like the insurance to have.

Affordable Health Insurance For Low Income Families

As health insurance costs continue to skyrocket, more and more low income families are finding it a struggle to find suitable cover at a cost which they can afford. The good news is that, for most families, it is still possible to find a suitable policy to meet the budget, but it does take a little bit of work. The first step is to do some comparison shopping.

The best place to start your comparison shopping is on the Internet which provides you with quick and easy access to a wide range of insurance companies. Here you can select a number of companies and ask them for a low cost health insurance quote online. For this you will need to fill out a simple application form and it's a good idea to jot down some basic information about yourself and your family's medical history before you start so that you don't have to stop and hunt around for it later.

Once you have a number of quotes, select a handful that look as though they might fit the bill and then look carefully at the cover that each company is offering and compare the plans to determine which plan provides you with the cover that you need at a price you can afford.

Republicans Finally Unveil Their Alternative Health Care Reform Plan — But It's Too Little, Too Late

Well it only took about four years – illustrating the GOP’s impeccable penchant for timing (sarcasm added) – but they’ve finally come up with an alternative solution to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Calling it the Republican Study Committee’s American Healthcare Reform Act – also illustrating their impeccable marketing skills (seriously, don’t they have a market research team that could come up with something a little more market centric or PR friendly?) – the House GOP are unveiling it Wednesday on the heels of an effort from a minority of Republicans (12 Senate Republicans and 71 House Republicans, to be exact, or 12% of the Senate and 16% of the House) threatening to “shutdown the government” if they can’t successfully defund Obamacare before the law's Oct. 1 implementation date.

GLOBAL IDEAS NEWS BRIEF: TAXING TELCOS + AFFORDABLE INSURANCE

Financial inclusion

Can affordable insurance underwrite social development for the world's poor?
The Guardian
MicroEnsure serves over four million people around the world with insurance, 80% of whom have never before been insured.

Charging the mobile
The Economist
East African governments are targeting telecoms firms. Are they being unfairly targeted as a proxy for taxing the informal economy?

Latest on Branchless Banking from Indonesia
CGAP blog, by Leesa Shrader
In terms of financial inclusion, Indonesia is renowned for its large scale microfinance sector, led by BRI, a range of commercial banks and over 60,000 MFIs reaching more than 50 million people. Despite this progress, the 2011 Global Financial Inclusion Index still finds only 19.6% of the population have formal accounts.

There are Two Kinds of Auto Insurance Buyers. Which Kind Are You?

One of the dirty little secrets of the auto insurance world is that there are two types of customers; savvy ones who pay rates considerably below the norm, and those who get a quote from just one company and end up paying way more than they need to.

If you’ve been casually following the news about the auto insurance industry over the past few years, you could be forgiven for believing that rates have skyrocketed and continue to climb.  The real story is that, as a result of relentless consumer and regulatory pressure on insurance companies, auto rates in many cases have actually dropped.  Of course, don’t expect your insurance company to let you know you could be getting coverage for less.

Five reasons Americans already love ObamaCare — plus one reason why they’re gonna love it even more, soon

There’s a reason Republicans have been rushing to try and defund the Affordable Care Act before October 1, when major sections of the law take effect.  

Republicans know what polls show — that most Americans don’t know what’s in ObamaCare, but when told what the law actually includes, a strong majority support the law.

Once state health insurance exchanges take effect, and premiums for all Americans go down, Republicans know the law will only become more popular and harder to repeal.