When most people think about life insurance, they’re thinking about term life, which you get for a number of years, usually like 15 or 20, and it leads to an interesting dilemma at the end of the term. You find yourself thinking "Gee, I’d really like to go on living, but if I die after this term expires, my family will get nothing. Whatever should I do?" Well, don’t panic! There are solutions to this problem that don’t involve pushing over the line of Harleys in front of a biker bar the week before your term is up.
The trick is to look for something besides term life insurance. There are other types, including universal life, whole life and variable universal life that end when your life does, not when the preset term does. The idea behind these types of insurance policies is that your policy is tied to an investment, with the theory being that your investment makes money throughout the term and eventually makes enough money to fund itself, with the investment paying for your premiums later in life. Of course markets vary and this doesn’t always work perfectly, but at the very least you get to keep the policy for your whole life, even if you are paying some or all of the premium the whole time. Some of these policies will also let you borrow against the cash value of the policy.
So if you don’t plan to conveniently die within the covered period of your term life insurance policy, you might want to consider whole, universal or variable universal life insurance.