According to LIFE, The Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education, we go to great lengths for our loved ones. We work hard to provide them with a life filled with happiness, comfort and opportunity. In fact, there’s almost nothing we wouldn’t do for our loved ones.

That’s where life insurance comes in. It can’t put your family’s life back to how it was, but it can keep your loved ones in the world they’ve always known. So if you think you need life insurance (or more than you currently have), now is the time to do something about it.

Watch these Cupid-on-the Street interviews on Love and Life Insurance.Then get a life insurance rate you will love at Efinancial by choosing the best life insurance rates from America’ top insurance companies

“Can you get life insurance while pregnant?” Are there special underwriting factors? What is the best way to get life insurance as a pregnant woman?” You are reading some of the most frequently asked questions in the life insurance field.

The most common answer is this: Typically, the best time to get life insurance is before you give birth to your newborn child. But let’s examine which conditions might be cause for concern?

Are your pregnant now? If you have a normal pregnancy and are otherwise low-risk, you can still get life insurance even while you’re pregnant. Expect the underwriter to order your medical records when you apply for insurance during pregnancy. The process may take a few extra weeks when records are ordered from your doctor’s office.

What is the life insurer looking for at this point? The underwriter wants to see what your weight was before and make sure that you’ve added a healthy amount of baby weight. They also want to make sure you don’t have any complications.

Are there actual medical issues that an insurance underwriter be concerned about with your pregnancy? A few complications may pose a risk.

Ectopic pregnancy

An ectopic pregnancy is defined as one where the  fertilized egg is attached in some other place than the uterus. The symptoms of such a condition could include pain and discomfort. However in the most evere cases, this condition could be a real cause for concern.

If you have an ectopic pregnancy, the life insurance underwriter will want to see your detailed medical records and make sure you have good follow-ups. In some cases, you may have to wait until after you deliver your baby to get your policy.

Gestational diabetes

Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes that only shows up in pregnant women. It is usually easy to manage and goes away after having your baby.

This condition will  increase your future risk of developing diabetes later in life.  A key co0ncern is that a woman’s  diabetes brought on during fgestationk may not disappear after delivery.  Since diabetes an be a cause for other ailments, including everything from a lower immune system to heart problems, getting life insurance may be problematic.

Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is another common pregnancy complication that may affect your life insurance. It is characterized primarily by high blood pressure. Your ability to get life insurance with preeclampsia will depend on your specific medical history and the life insurance company you choose. An underwriter may be comfortable with a stable situation that is well-controlled. In many cases, however, you may have to wait until after your condition completely resolves to re-apply for life insurance.

Getting Ready for Baby

If you have a normal pregnancy, go ahead and get a  life insurance quote. Explain you are with-child in the open field and answer the rest of the questions normally.

If you experience complications while pregnant, you may still be able to get life insurance. The best advice is to be patient with the underwriting process. Depending on your situation, you may be asked to re-apply after your condition has resolved. If the life insurance rate you get comes back higher than you expected, go ahead and take it, knowing that you can always apply again later to try to reduce your premium.

The marriage vows promise “Until Death Do Us Part.”  But the striking statistics of divorce in America tell a drastically different story.

About two million Americans get married each year and roughly half wind up in a divorce proceeding. Even more astounding, 20 percent of marrriages end within the first five years, 30 percent of marriages end in 10 years.

The simple fact that a divorce process can take years, during which time two households may need to be maintained and attorney fees have to be paid, means that a family’s financial security hangs in the balance, especially when children are involved.

Who should be the owner of life insurance policies related to a divorce settlement?

Keep in mind the purpose of an affordable life insurance policy to begin with.  In most cases, life insurance is used to protect the income of a spouse providing alimony and/or child support. The reason for the life insurance policy does not end with divorce where young children are involved,  In that eventuality, the life insurance policy would insure the life of the spouse providing child support, and the beneficiary would be the spouse receiving the support. If the providing spouse were to die, the life insurance proceeds can be used to replace the lost income.

Who owns and controls the policy beneficiary?

The owner of a life insurance policy is a central issue, because the owner can change the beneficiary at any time. If the policy has cash value, the owner has control of this as well. Consider that divorced spouses often remarry and have additional children. Non-custodial parents often lose contact and concern for their former spouse, and perhaps even their common children.

Most divorce courts will require the providing spouse to maintain a life insurance policy that will cover the support payments for however long the payments are supposed to be made. However, enforcing this may become problematical as time goes on, especially given that there is no automatic way of being notified that payments are being made, or that no changes have been made to the beneficiary.

If you are concerned about enforcing life insurance protection as part of a divorce settlement, ask your attorney if the policy ownership can be entrusted to you. Even if this means paying the premiums yourself, the premiums can always be figured into the support payments.

Have more questions and Life insurance and Divorce?  Ask Efinancial for answers!

As we prepare to turn the calendar page at year’s end, and commence a new chapter at the opening of a new decade,  Father Time reminds us of something important.  Life insurance serves many families as the financial binding  in the “book of life,” connecting both family estates and generations as years go by.

A controversial question can arise: Should children consider life insurance for their elderly parents, planning for the eventuality of their passing, so that a sum of money can be left for their children and grandchildren?

The question has both financial and familial repercussions.

Economically, a grandparent who is say, age 65,  may be facing 20 years or more of premiums that are costlier at an advanced age. Children might prefer to set money aside in the event a parent cannot care for themselves, such as for healthcare or long term living assistance.

Besides the budget, an essential question is how does the elder parent feel about it?

The opportunity could be viewed as the same as taking the policy out for oneself, except that the children are there to help pay for it. Assuming eligibility for insurance, the arrangement is an equitable one since the family will be the ones who will receive the insurance benefit in time.

So long as the motivation is not to take out a policy solely for monetary gain, any moral question is averted.

The primary purpose of  life insurance to provide for family who can’t adequately cover themselves. Assuming the children are all on their own two feet financially, it may not be necessary to create a death benefit for an elderly parent, but for thoser who can afford this form of estate planning, the option may be sound.

What’s your view on life insurance for parents?

At this introspective time of year, it’s worth reflecting that the joy of the holidays isn’t found in a shopping bag and the yuletide spirit isn’t limited to a single day on the calendar.

The perfect gift is one where you give of yourself to others, either in the form of your creativity -— a hand-crafted gift like a tin can pencil holder or a hand-painted paperweight — or your time — the preparation of a home cooked meal, a nature walk in the woods,  or a chess or photography lesson.

As written in A Christmas Digest, “The dictionary defines a gift as simply, ‘a thing given.’ It says nothing about cost  — only the condition of the heart. One person giving to another. That’s all.”

Give yourself away and see what happens. You may just get what you really want for Christmas.

The average student who graduates from high school today is at a financial disadvantage. We’re not talking about money. This deficit is a lack of financial knowledge. So many young adults lack basic skills in the management of personal financial affairs. Many are unable to balance a checkbook and most simply have no insight into the basic survival principles involved with earning, spending, saving and investing.

The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy is fighting back. The organization offers a Clearinghouse whose aim is to identify high-quality personal finance materials for educational use. Once you find material of interest, you can either download it for free or order it directly from the source. Teachers are encouraged to use these personal finance teaching materials to support their state’s standards in economics, business, math and family and consumer science.

“40 MONEY MANAGEMENT TIPS EVERY COLLEGE STUDENT SHOULD KNOW” helps students get organized and offers tips on financial aid, checking accounts, spending plans, dorms and apartments, savings, jobs and debt. A single copy may be downloaded from the website. Download it here

What financial advice do you have for today’s college student?

When thinking about life insurance coverage, a central question for parents is “How much does it cost to raise a child?”  The U.S. government has answers.

Middle-income U.S. parents of a child born in 2008 can expect to spend $291,570 for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next seventeen years, up from the 1960 low-low price tag of $25,230, and $204,060 in 2007, according to a  report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

According to the USDA’s report, Expenditures on Children by Families, providing housing represents the largest expenditure in raising a child, averaging $69,660 or 32 percent of the total cost over the seventeen year period. Food and child care/education were the next largest expenditures, averaging 16 percent of the total cost. Transportation — driving the kids here-and-there — accounted for 14 percent of the cost.

USDA notes that the cost estimates in the 2008 report did not include the medical costs associated with childbirth, and that some of the highest modern-day costs, such as child care were “negligible” in 1960.

The More you Have, the More you will Spend
The report also notes that total family income affects the cost of raising a child. A family earning less than $56,870 per year can expect to spend a total of $159,870 on a child from birth through high school. Similarly, middle-income parents with an income between $56,870 and $98,470 can expect to spend $221,190; and a family earning more than $98,470 can expect to spend $366,660.  Keep these costs in mind when you shop for the best rates in life insurance.

At the just concluded Finovate 2009 Conference in New York City, the theme centered on innovation in all things financial, with a special emphasis on grooming the next generation of smart investors, savers and budgeters, today’s young people.

Thankfully, entrepreneurs are sensing the need to educate young people about personal finance so they can recognize true value in financial products and services and separate fact from fiction. A wonderful learning tool is Cents City, created by a Washington D.C. teacher of the year and an avid video gamer. With Cents City, Felix Brandon Lloyd and Todd Waits have created a city in cyberspace where kids can learn about saving, budgeting, and credit. The starter version is free, or you can upgrade to the “Passport Edition” for $4.95.

Slightly older kids (aged 15 and up) who have real money to play with can learn how to budget and invest at Tile Financial. Tile Financial teaches teens and young adults how to manage their money, while it also prioritizes giving back to the community.

For the those of us who are basically big kids at heart, there’s Kapitall. Kapitall offers a new way to invest that makes choosing stocks feel like a really slick (yet educational) video game. As co-founder David Neubert says, “We want to do for investing what Apple Macintosh did for computing.”

How are you teaching young people the lessons of finance?

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.

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.