Comments on: Using Whole Life Insurance to Create a Pension Income Stream

By: Shaun

Shaun — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:03:28 +0000

Whole life insurance is a fairly crappy way of getting insurance — but can be an incredibly useful financial product for other reasons. The very wealthy, for example, might put quite a bit into a policy simply because if they go bankrupt they’ll have something to fall back on.

By: Patrick The Insurance Guy

Patrick The Insurance Guy — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:20:07 +0000

As a licensed life insurance agent for 8 years I always strongly encourage my clients to have tax qualified accounts (401k, 403B, IRA’s, etc.), and I encourage them to carry Cash Value Life Insurance (Whole Life, or some form of properly funded and structed Universal Life) to suppliment their retirement income.
While there are several schools of thought about Cash Value Life Insurance one should ask themselves; “Do you believe taxes in our great nation will be rising in coming years or falling?” If you believe, as many do, that taxes will rise, then you should at least consider the potentially tax free benefits that Cash Value Life Insurance will offer.

By: Ron Manuel

Ron Manuel — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:29:35 +0000

The subject of life insurance in retirement reminded me of something I’ve never seen addressed by any authors/experts–life insurance to protect against loss of Social Security income upon a spouse’s death.

Years ago when I taught personal money management at the college level, I told students that life insurance should only be used when someone is dependent upon your income. I always assumed that in retirement when earned income ceased that there would be no need for life insurance.

But I’m now counting both on Social Security not going bust and on both my wife and I collecting it based on our own earnings records for part of our combined source of income in retirement. If I die early, my wife can of course switch over to my somewhat higher benefit, but our expenses won’t reduce by 50% when one of us dies. I’m now seriously considering continuing life insurance in retirement at an amount approximating the present value of future Social Security benefits.