68 Million Adult Americans have No Life Insurance

The national debate over health care reform has brought to life the number of Americans who lack fundamental health insurance.

An equally astounding number of Americans are lacking the financial security of life insurance.

September has become a focal point in the industry’s attempt to address the
problem of too many Americans lacking adequate life insurance protection.

The organization known as LIFE estimates that 68 million adult Americans have no life insurance at all, and most with coverage have far less than experts recommend. In response to this underinsurance problem, hundreds of life insurance organizations and thousands of individual producers participate in Life Insurance Awareness Month each year.

Some of the nation’s top insurance companies participating this year include State Farm, New York Life, Penn Mutual, AEGON, MassMutual, John Hancock, Guardian, Principal Financial Group,
Prudential, Southern Farm Bureau, COUNTRY Financial, American National, Farm Family and Illinois Mutual.

Efinancial salutes Life Insurance Awareness Month and represents a one stop shop for life insurance among America’s top life insurance companies.

Doing a Life Insurance Needs Analysis

How much life insurance is enough life insurance for you and your family? Just pay a visit to Efinancial.com to calculate  the sum on one of our handy Life Insurance Calculators. To determine how much insurance you need, our calculators perform an instant life insurance needs analysis.  Here’s a step by step guide on how we do it so you can calculate how much insurance you  need right off the top of your head.

Figure the…

1. Total annual needed by your spouse and children in the event of your death.
2. Number of years you would like to provide this income to your spouse or children.
3. Your gross income annually.
4. Your date of birth.
5. Your spouse’s gross income.
6. Would you like to pay off any outstanding debt? For example, mortgage, loans, credit cards, college. If so, enter the debt amount.
7. Burial expenses. That can include funeral, probate, and any other legal matters.
8. Total amount of your existing life insurance.
9. Interest rate assumption. This assumes the interest death benefit proceeds are invested.
10. Press Total.

For Low Cost Auto Insurance, Know Your Vehicle Insurance Rating

When it comes to getting more insurance value for every dollar, you’re in the driver’s seat if you’re sitting at your desktop or laptop computer.  By shopping online for low-cost insurance, you can easily navigate among rates from several companies quickly and easily on the Web. While online insurance comparison shopping can put you miles ahead in the category of automobile insurance, another important factor where car insurance is concerned is the vehicle insurance rating.

Insurance underwriters evaluate an automotive policy by rating a vehicle in terms of size, weight, performance, theft ratings, crash ratings, and safety features. If the cost of insurance is a concern, you would be well advised to get quotes on a few different cars you’re interested before finalizing the purchase decision. The difference in premium between an older 4 cylinder compact car to a newer truck or SUV can be substantial.

Read more on smarter online shopping for auto insurance >>

Life Insurance Awareness Month: Protecting a College Education

The Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE) which is sponsoring National Life Insurance Awareness Month throughout the month of September wants to make college education a “teachable moment” for parents as well as their college-age children.  The Foundation has made it a point to teach a life lesson to parents about including life insurance in their college-funding plans.

Coming up with the money to pay for college is a challenge for most young people, but the task becomes even more daunting when a parent dies prematurely, especially if that person didn’t have adequate life insurance coverage. With mom or dad no longer able to lend a hand, many young people often have no choice but to set aside or postpone their dream of a college education. Evidence of this problem is well documented in the thousands of submissions that the nonprofit LIFE Foundation receives each year through its LIFE Lessons Scholarship Program.

Efinancial salutes families across America that are funding higher education for their students. The Efinancial E-Learning Center has dozens of Q&A articles on a wide range of life insurance topics including Questions About Shopping for Life Insurance, Questions About Buying Life Insurance and Understanding the Differences in Life Insurance Products.  Learn more about the many aspects of life insurance products and services by visiting our E-Learning Center.

Video: Life Insurance Awareness Month is the Ideal Time for an Insurance Review

If you had a choice between thinking about life insurance or entering a photo contest with the chance to win great prizes, which would you choose? Okay, don’t answer that. But what if you could do both at the same time? In conjunction with the beginning of Life Insurance Awareness Month, the nonprofit LIFE Foundation has kicked off the “Wonders of Life” Photo Contest to provide Americans with a fun way to get them thinking about their life insurance needs.

Throughout September, Americans are encouraged to visit www.wondersoflife.org and upload a photograph that captures a wondrous moment in the life of their family, the kind of moment that life insurance can preserve.

“People want the very best for their loved ones and work hard to provide them with a comfortable lifestyle and every opportunity to experience the wondrous moments that life has to offer,” said Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, RFC, president and CEO of LIFE. “But people need to think about what would happen to their loved ones’ quality of life if something were to happen to them. We hope that our contest will help Americans realize how life insurance can help preserve all that they’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

The grand prize winner will receive a Canon T1i, 12.2-Megapixel Digital SLR Camera. Five runners-up will win $150 gift cards to BestBuy.com. LIFE will announce the winners of the “Wonders of Life” Photo Contest on or around November 18, 2009 and feature winning photos on its website. The deadline to enter is September 30, 2009. Entrants must be 18 years or older.

To view the ‘Wonders of Life” video, visit the following link.  And remember: Efinancial can help you shop for affordable life insurance from more of America’s top life insurance companies, all in one easy free life insurance quote.

Bundling Life Insurance? Let’s Get Back to Banking the Old-Fashioned Way.

Last week’s news that Wall Street investment bankers were looking to replace bundled mortgage-backed securities by bundling life insurance policies shows a wanton disregard for the integrity of the financial system and for the resilience of the market system itself.  The contemplation of such a model in the immediate aftermath of the most severe banking crisis in 80 years, should be a clarion call to hasten the needed regulation in financial services.

Under a life insurance bundling scheme,  elderly people strapped for cash would ostensibly sell their life insurance policies for pennies on the dollar (maybe up to $400,000 on a $1 million policy), and Wall Street would buy them, bundle them and sell them to investors.

Securitization of a commodity is, in many ways, a sound business practice, especially if you’re the banker doing the selling. But, just as mortgage-backed securities carried a level of risk that made them more like gambling than investing, life-insurance bundling means the security sold is not what it seems. Like mortgage-backed derivatives, life-insurance derivatives would deal with a finite pool of money whose value will not increase over time: at some point, one of the gambling investors will find there is not enough money to cover initial investment plus interest.
Read More About the Dillemas with Life Insurance Bundling

The September Chill Effect – Leaves Fall, but Finances too?

The editors of Financial Highway have compiled a scary list of financial events which have befallen investors, like large oak leaves and plump acorns that plummet earthward, around the month of September. Historically speaking, (recent history in particular), September has been the worst month of the twelve for investors and the stock market. Remember the 2008 market crash when Lehman Brother’s went under and the market tumbled? That was September. The bear market in 2002? September again. The crash in 2000 and 9/11? September 2001.

That fateful period when the Dow lost almost 30% during the 1930 Depression was also a mournful September morn.

With a mere two days into September ‘09 thus far, the September wind chill factor is a little blustery. The S&P 500 is slightly negative so far.

University finance professor Mark Kamstra relates the September effect to seasonal affective disorder (SAD) a psychological condition analyzed in this study.  Brett Arends at Wall Street Journal crossed the bridge to financial markets with the theories behind the September effect.

Sound advice is to keep your wits about you and don’t lose your jack-o-lantern head like Ichabod, the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.  I mean, do you really feel there is something about September that drags down the stock market or is the end of summer simply a time of  reckoning?