Three Financial Do-Overs. Is Insurance One of Them?

The financial blog “Your Money Relationship” is asking Netizens: “What financial decisions in your life would you change if given the chance?

Should you have started saving earlier? (Who wouldn’t have?) Would you have torn up your credit cards or shopped for a better rate? Wish you would have fully-funded your IRA every year since you opened the account so many years ago? You’re not alone.

For family breadwinners, now is the time to enter a “virtual time machine” and correct any deficiencies in your life insurance coverage you might “someday” wish you had when given the chance.  After all, if you make a mistake with life insurance, it will be too late for a make-up wish once the insurance pays benefits to the loved-ones who outlive you. Make sure you’re in good shape right now with a free life insurance quote from America’s top life insurance companies at Efinancial!

What would you “do-over” if Efinancial gave you a “Genie in a Bottle”?

A Daring Topic: 4 Things You Must Have in Order to Prepare for Your Death

While the subject of death is probably lowest on the list of topics for polite dinner table conversation, it must be highest on the list for planning for your family’s financial future when you are no longer present.  I don’t mean you need to discuss it in front of your children, the neighbors, or at a social gathering, but it’s essential to take the time to deal with what is the most certain of eventualities in the comfort and privacy of your home.

There are four things you must have in order to prepare for the day that you depart from this mortal coil.

Life Insurance. If you have children or a spouse who depends on your income to pay the mortgage and manage everyday living expenses, you must take the time to get an affordable  life insurance policy that pays your family in the event of your death.

Learn more about how to insure family financial security

Birds of a Feather Flocking to Personal Finance on Twitter

Have you done any Tweeting about your personal finances lately?  We don’t mean chirping like a parakeet or cackling like a crow.  Twitter is a simple messaging service for friends, family, and even many businesses that makes it easy to communicate through the exchange of short messages of 140 characters or less.

Twitter is much more than just chatter.  For many it is a revolutionary way to find the freshest, most relevant information on a particular topic.   Don’t knock Twitter until you try it.  And if you’d like to follow a flock of  financial planning “Tweeple” or Tweeps, check out the list that one Twitterer (”Saving for Serenity“) calls The Ultimate List of Personal Finance Bloggers on Twitter.

General Personal Finance

@bripblap – Steve from Brip Blap

@budgetnerd – Nathon from Household Budget Nerd

@colourful_money – Bullseye and PlusEV from Colourful Money

@debtfree – Debt Free Hispanic

@FMFblog – FMF from Free Money Finance

@freefrombroke – Free From Broke

@FourPillars – Four Pillars

Discover more of the best of twitter for personal finance

Calculating How Much Life Insurance You Need

A friend recently related a story of how a man and his wife had bought and re-bought new life insurance policies several times over the past 5-10 years. As their income increased and their responsibilities grew, they had steadily outgrown their coverage.  It’s a common occurrence and easy-to-understand.

While a standard rule of thumb is to lock in a term policy for 8x or 10x your annual salary, the actual coverage amount that is right for your family depends entirely on your personal situation. If you want your life insurance policy to provide support for your family for an extended period of time, you’ll obviously need more coverage. If you’re comfortable with your insurance policy being a short-term stopgap, you can get away with less.

Efinancial offers an online life insurance calculator that allows you to enter data on anticipated one-time expenses, ongoing living expenses, years of need, and any special savings goals you may have. Just a few seconds is all it takes to “crunch the numbers” and give you a cushion to fall back on.  In addition, Efinancial also offers Insurance Calculators to determine your Net Worth, estimate the Cost of Raising Children, or calcuating an Annuity.  Just scroll down the Efinancial home page to find these handy and informative Insurance Calculator choices.
Learn how to calculate your life insurance needs

10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget

A new book, organized as a type of ‘frugal encyclopedia’, based on articles written by the editors of Wisebread.com, offers up a smorgasbord of tips on how to live large on a small budget.

Speaking of smorgasbords, the pointers range from “8 Tips for Getting the Most from All-You-Can-Eat Buffets” to  “7 Ways to Score Free Food,” and “14 Tips to Have a Frugal Vacation and Still Treat Yourself,” to “15 Ways to Make Your Clothes Last Longer,” “10 Beauty Products You Can Make at Home,” and “8 Affordable Romantic Dates.”

You’ll also find “50 Ways to Get More Out Of Health Care,”  “6 Ways to Avoid Tricky Supermarket Traps,” “10 Ways to Go Green and Save Money,” and “6 Steps to Eliminating Your Debt Painlessly.”

What are your tips for living large on a small budget?

Read more about living on a small budget

The Economy Writ Small – as Haiku!

At the end of National Poetry Month, “The Motley Fool” has put together some amusing financial haikus, short three-line poems of only 17-syllables.  We excerpt a few as examples.  Read the complete lineup at http://tinyurl.com/d7f5c3 .

The Swine Flew
Confidence is king
Banks’ balance sheets are just fine
Oh, look, pigs can fly

The Goldman Sachs Shimmy
Goldman Sachs defies
Trading destroyed estimates
How do I sign up?

Read more financial jokes