Life insurance offers a benefit that many people don’t even realize: The benefit of enjoying your retirement savings. You might not see the connection between a Life insurance policy and retirement, but there are actually two ways in which this coverage can help you relax and enjoy your retirement years:
- Life insurance can provide a legacy to your heirs.
- A Life insurance policy with sufficient cash values can be used for supplemental retirement income.
Life Insurance Benefit 1: Legacy Planning. Without Life insurance, the only way to leave behind a legacy to your heirs is by preserving some of your net assets for their inheritance. That means instead of enjoying your retirement by traveling, shopping, and relaxing you must be ultra conservative about your spending. You need to budget carefully, sacrifice your own enjoyment and not only make sure that you don’t over-spend your retirement savings, but ensure that you under-spend it. When there are fluctuations in the market and your retirement account balances begin to fall, legacy savings add additional stress to the situation and can even result in resentment of those to whom you once wanted to leave a legacy.
With Life insurance, you never have to worry about legacy planning. Your heirs will inherit the Life insurance death benefit proceeds and they won’t contend with the hassle of probate, estate taxes (if structured properly) or fluctuation in estate value based on the market. The best part is that you don’t even need a high cash value Life insurance policy; you can obtain a Permanent or Term insurance policy that offers only a death benefit. Either way your needs, goals and objectives are covered.
Life Insurance Benefit 2: Supplemental Income. There might come a time during your retirement when you need an extra source of cash to tap into, for example, to help a friend or family member through a difficult time, or to help you bridge a small financial gap. If you do need a loan, who better to borrow money from than yourself? When you take a tax-free loan from the cash values of your Permanent Life insurance policy, you pay interest back to yourself — not to a bank, but to your own policy.
If you are unable to pay off the loan before your death then your death benefit will be reduced by the outstanding loan value. That means you can borrow money, not pay it back and still leave a legacy (as long as the policy doesn’t lapse due to insufficient values). Because significant cash values can take years to accrue, the time to buy a Life insurance policy for tax-free retirement income is now.
Whether you are worried about the financial stability of your investments or you simply don’t want the stress of trying to under-spend your retirement savings, a Life insurance policy could be the right answer for you.
