insured – Susman

August 23, 2015

Do You Need Life Insurance

It can be very difficult to decide if you need life insurance. Life insurance can be an extremely onerous financial commitment and investment, and it will also last for a considerable period of time, so you should take careful consideration in deciding if it is the best way of achieving the financial and other goals you and your loved ones may have.

Life Insurance Policy

Basically, a life insurance policy will cause a sum to be paid to the named beneficiary upon the death of the insured. This sum will generally be paid to the beneficiary, free of income tax. So in which instances is life insurance generally used above its alternatives? Well its primary function is to provide death benefit protection in a tax efficient way. For example, if you would like to transfer wealth from your estate to your beneficiaries you can do it through life insurance.

You should now that it may still be liable to federal estate taxes. It can also be used to ensure the continuation or protection of a business and to provide financial benefits to your partners or employees who may otherwise be at risk financially. It may also be used to support your family or other dependents that rely on your income during life. It can replace this income and support them in your place for a period. It can also be used to supplement retirement income in various instances when other contributions are not possible.

Be Aware

You can access the money in your policy unless it is a Modified Endowment Contract. What’s more, it will be federal income tax free so long as you make the withdrawal by borrowing against the policy and do not exceed what you have paid into the policy. Withdrawals from an MEC are subject to federal income tax on the gains they have made. There is an additional 10% tax in certain situations.

You should be aware that all withdrawals and loans against a permanent life insurance policy would reduce the policy’s value and the amount of any pay out upon death of the insured. There may also be various fees and penalties associated with accessing the money early so you should be aware of these and if they are very onerous, you may wish to look for an alternative source of funds so that you don’t have to fall prey to these. Also, if your policy is invested on your behalf, the amount available for withdrawal or loans may be less or more than what you have paid in, depending on how your investments perform.

July 25, 2015

Criticism of Insurance

Insurance policies work by taking premiums from customers in exchange for baring the risk of certain costly events occurring. For example, if there is one fire in your town each month, everyone could just sit tight and hope their house doesn’t burn down next, or could pitch in and pay an insurance premium each month and this is then used to rebuild the house that burns down. Very simply this is how insurance works. It is a method of spreading a risk over a far wider area, so that it will not be as devastating as if it was concentrated solely on the person who experiences the loss.

Exclusion Clauses

There are a few problems with this however and they attract much criticism. One criticism is that by taking on the risk for people, insurance makes people take greater risks than they otherwise would. For example, if you know your home contents are insured against burglary, then you may not be as careful about locking the doors and windows every time you leave the house. Or if your bike is insured, you may not bother to lock it as much as if it wasn’t insured. In the insurance industry, this problem is known as the moral hazard.

Insurance companies protect themselves against this by inserting exclusion clauses into their contracts, which remove their obligation to pay out if the insured performs or fails to perform certain stated actions. They might for instance require that you fit smoke detectors, or use good locks on your doors, or other things that will reduce the risk of the insured against event occurring.

Too Complex

There are also certain risks that you are not allowed to insure against in most countries. This is first of all because it would be too difficult for the insurance companies to quantify, but mostly it’s because they are risks that governments want the person at risk to bare himself or herself. They generally apply to multinational companies.

There is also the criticism that insurance policies are far too complex for the vast majority of consumers to underst and. It is simply unreasonable to expect the customer to underst and lengthy documents that have been drafted by not one, but usually teams of specialised lawyers. This can lead to consumers being misled or buying insurance policies on unfavourable terms. To get around this, most countries regulate the content of insurance contracts to ensure that they remain fair to consumers.

There is also the option of using the services of an insurance broker to shop the market for you.

December 31, 2014

7 Things Seniors (and Everyone Else) Should Know About FDIC Insurance

Older Americans put their money… and their trust… in FDIC-insured bank accounts because they want peace of mind about the savings they’ve worked so hard over the years to accumulate. Here are a few things senior citizens should know and remember about FDIC insurance.

1. The basic insurance limit is $100,000 per depositor per insured bank. If you or your family has $100,000 or less in all of your deposit accounts at the same insured bank, you don’t need to worry about your insurance coverage. Your funds are fully insured. Your deposits in separately chartered banks are separately insured, even if the banks are affiliated, such as belonging to the same parent company.

2. You may qualify for more than $100,000 in coverage at one insured bank if you own deposit accounts in different ownership categories. There are several different ownership categories, but the most common for consumers are single ownership accounts (for one owner), joint ownership accounts (for two or more people), self-directed retirement accounts (Individual Retirement Accounts and Keogh accounts for which you choose how and where the money is deposited) and revocable trusts (a deposit account saying the funds will pass to one or more named beneficiaries when the owner dies). Deposits in different ownership categories are separately insured. That means one person could have far more than $100,000 of FDIC insurance coverage at the same bank if the funds are in separate ownership categories.

3. A death or divorce in the family can reduce the FDIC insurance coverage. Let’s say two people own an account and one dies. The FDIC’s rules allow a six-month grace period after a depositor’s death to give survivors or estate executors a chance to restructure accounts. But if you fail to act within six months, you run the risk of the accounts going over the $100,000 limit.

Example: A husb and and wife have a joint account with a “right of survivorship,” a common provision in joint accounts specifying that if one person dies the other will own all the money. The account totals $150,000, which is fully insured because there are two owners (giving them up to $200,000 of coverage). But if one of the two co-owners dies and the surviving spouse doesn’t change the account within six months, the $150,000 deposit automatically would be insured to only $100,000 as the surviving spouse’s single-ownership account, along with any other accounts in that category at the bank. The result: $50,000 or more would be over the insurance limit and at risk of loss if the bank failed.

Also be aware that the death or divorce of a beneficiary on certain trust accounts can reduce the insurance coverage immediately. There is no six-month grace period in those situations.

4. No depositor has lost a single cent of FDIC-insured funds as a result of a failure. FDIC insurance only comes into play when an FDIC-insured banking institution fails. And fortunately, bank failures are rare nowadays. That’s largely because all FDIC-insured banking institutions must meet high st andards for financial strength and stability. But if your bank were to fail, FDIC insurance would cover your deposit accounts, dollar for dollar, including principal and accrued interest, up to the insurance limit. If your bank fails and you have deposits above the $100,000 federal insurance limit, you may be able to recover some or, in rare cases, all of your uninsured funds. However, the overwhelming majority of depositors at failed institutions are within the $100,000 insurance limit.

5. The FDIC’s deposit insurance guarantee is rock solid. As of mid-year 2005, the FDIC had $48 billion in reserves to protect depositors. Some people say they’ve been told (usually by marketers of investments that compete with bank deposits) that the FDIC doesn’t have the resources to cover depositors’ insured funds if an unprecedented number of banks were to fail. That’s false information.

6. The FDIC pays depositors promptly after the failure of an insured bank. Most insurance payments are made within a few days, usually by the next business day after the bank is closed. Don’t believe the misinformation being spread by some investment sellers who claim that the FDIC takes years to pay insured depositors.

7. You are responsible for knowing your deposit insurance coverage.

Know the rules, protect your money.

Do You Need Life Insurance

Do You Need Life Insurance

Criticism of Insurance

7 Things Seniors (and Everyone Else) Should Know About FDIC Insurance

Information

Specialty Products

Contact Us