Buying the Life Insurance Plan you Need
Understanding your financial and safety needs and finding the best suitable life insurance plan accordingly is what you need to do. Given below are a few steps and tips to break down your search and find the life insurance plan for your family:
1. Know Your Options
There are two types of life insurance plans:
- Pure protection plans
- Savings plans
Pure protection plans usually only work in case of an emergency. For example, a term insurance plan or health insurance plan. These plans have lower premiums but have a very important role to play in your family’s survival if anything happens to you.
Savings plans, like unit-linked insurance plans (ULIPs), endowment plans, child plans, retirement and pension plans are designed to help you achieve specific life goals. With these plans, you can hope to achieve your goal within the safety umbrella of a life cover.
For example, if you are saving for your child’s higher education, a child plan will ensure that your child gets the financial support you planned for her/him. In the case of your early demise, the plan continues to invest in your child’s goal and pays the maturity funds to the child as you intended.
2. Assess Your Insurance Need
Your insurance needs consists of two factors:
- Your family’s lifestyle and living costs (Covered by pure protection life insurance plans like term life insurance)
- Your family’s future goals (cover individually with savings plans)
The assessment of these two will let you know the premium amount you can pay regularly. Remember life insurance comes before investments. So, even if your income and expenses do not allow huge savings, at least the pure protection life insurance plan is a must.
The amount of cover in these plans should, however, depend on the financial need of your family. For example, a term life cover should be large enough to help your family maintain their lifestyle until the children grow up and start earning.
Or you can follow a simple rule of thumb and buy a term life cover at least 10 times your annual income. This will be enough to cover your family’s urgent financial needs for long enough for them to stand on their feet.
The financial goals will be covered individually with your savings plan investments.