1. Review Every Plan: Start reviewing every plan available from your employer now.  You may be able to choose a plan that would cost less if you were later required to pay the entire premium through COBRA. Always make sure that the plan you choose will cover the health care benefits you need for the coming year.
2. Evaluate Premiums: Look at the premium for your current employer-sponsored plan and see if that premium is increasing. If saving on your monthly share of the premium is a priority, you may want to revisit this plan and opt for one of the less expensive plans available from your company’s benefits provider.
3. Shop Smarter: Buy only what you need and potentially save on the monthly premium.  Choosing a high deductible plan is smart for some individuals and families because it typically reduces monthly premiums, but you must be prepared to pay the amount of the deductible in the coming year as health care needs arise.
4. Compare with your Spouse: Check your spouse’s plan to see if the employee share of the premium is more or less than your plan. It may be more cost-effective to insure you or your family under their plan.
5. Mix and Match: Depending on health conditions, it can be less expensive for certain family members to be on a separate plan than the employer-sponsored plan.  Do the math on separate policies if there are special needs.  It’s easy to price individual and family plans online.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect upon and give thanks for everything good in your life. If you’re like me, what you give thanks for is probably different each year based on what’s going on in your life at the time.

As a company, all of us at AccuQuote are thankful that we have such a tremendous group of customers just like you. It’s your trust that has allowed us to grow year after year. With many financial institutions having difficulty right now, we’re thankful to be at the tail end of another successful year that finds us stronger than we’ve ever been.

Personally, I’m thankful for my own health and my loving family. For anyone who has experienced the diagnosis of a terminal illness or death within their family or tight circle of friends, like I have this year, it brings into focus the things in life that are most important.

My own reflection of what I’m thankful for has given me an even stronger resolve to not only keep everyone at AccuQuote focused on passionately delivering the message about the importance of having the right life insurance coverage, but also on continuing to provide the best service possible to our customers. In addition, our team is committed to continually finding ways to make things easier and better for you in several aspects of your life.

To that end, here are a couple of my Thanksgiving thoughts:

• In my personal and professional life, I’ve seen firsthand what life insurance (or even the absence of life insurance) means to a family when a loved one dies. It’s an importance piece to a financial future. When one of our customers dies, while a somber moment, it gives us a great deal of satisfaction to know that we had such a positive financial impact on that family. When our life insurance agents tell people that “this may be the most important conversation in your life, for your family’s future”, this is the type of thing that we’re talking about.

• Second, I’m thankful that AccuQuote has a strong enough brand to be able to partner with top notch companies that have excellent complimentary products. We have partnered with a few companies over the past year which have great products that can help most of you in various aspects of your life. We’ve worked hard to make this available with exclusive discounts, but we’ve done a less than exemplary job of communicating this to you. You’ll start to notice this change over the course of the next few months. Please feel free to let us know how we can better communicate these complementary products and services. An example of a few trusted partners are: TurboTax, LegalZoom (discount code: AccuQuote) , and Restaurant.com.

So, now it’s your turn to tell me, what are thankful for this holiday season?  We look forward to hearing from you!

From my family to yours….have a safe, healthy and happy Thanksgiving!

As we gear up for the upcoming holiday, I found some interesting facts that I thought I’d share with you.

Did you know that despite record-high gas prices in 2007, the American Automobile Association (AAA) estimated that 38.7 million Americans would travel 50 miles or more from home for the Thanksgiving holiday, a slight increase (1.5 percent) over the previous year.  Of those Americans traveling for Thanksgiving in 2007, approximately 80 percent (31.2 million) were expected to go by motor vehicle, 12.1 percent (4.7 million) by airplane and the rest (2.8 million) by train, bus or other mode of transportation.

Tell me, what are your plans this holiday? Now that gas prices are a bit lower, do you plan on traveling?

Here’s another good article I found from InsuranceNewsNet that I wanted to share with you.

The investment component of the variable universal life products requires its policy owner to have a basic understanding of stocks, bonds and securities because its future value depended on its underlying investments. Any uninformed or poor investment decisions could actually trigger a higher price of the premium or cause the policy to lapse if it’s not properly funded.

In late 2002, the collapse of the Internet bubble forced many VUL policyholders to put in more money to keep their contracts from lapsing. As a result many insurance agents and financial advisors relegated traditional VULs to the back seat. Traditional VULs stayed there even during periods of strong equity returns from 2003 through 2005 because these products were widely seen as lacking competitive product guarantees.

In 2007 some carriers sought to revitalize flagging variable universal life (VUL) insurance by introducing hybrid VULs.  The big difference between the two VULs is that the hybrids provide the opportunity for significant contract growth without the risk of policy to lapse without paying more premiums in the event of negative returns due to a faltering market.

Unlike traditional VULs, hybrd VULs have built-in features, particularly a downside protection, extended no-lapse guarantee, death benefit guarantees and minimum distribution guarantees that resonated with both investors and producers. These new guarantees and riders are credited for jumpstarting VUL sales despite the unpredictability of the equity markets.

Typically, most of the add-ons are available at a cost and some, particularly long-term care protection, can be very expensive. Assembling a hybrid VUL should be done with great care so that the insured doesn’t end up paying for something that is unnecessary. They can also add a layer of complexity to a policy that may already be complicated for certain consumers with limited investing experience.

Here’s an exact reprint of an article from InsuranceNewsNet, an insurance industry publication.  I thought it would be a good article to share as is does a great job of explaining what the new presidency means for the insurance industry and ultimately for you as consumers.

Without a doubt, the election signaled a shift, but what does that mean for the insurance industry?

The political landscape has changed profoundly, not just because we will have a Democratic president given the biggest mandate since Lyndon B. Johnson’s second term. Barack Obama will also have a compliant Congress with a convincing Democratic majority.

Although looking at the crystal ball is usually about as reliable as turning over the Magic 8 Ball for answers, we know the issues and some of the likely scenarios:

ESTATE TAX: Obviously a key issue for life insurance. It was already clear the tax was not going to be annulled under either administration. Obama has already said he would leave the tax at the 2009 level, meaning an exemption for the first $3.5 million, $7 million for couples and a top rate of 45 percent. Congress seems to be in consensus on this.

“THE THIN THREE THREADS:” This is the phrase the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU) derived to describe the circumstances that give life insurance its unique value. They are inside cash build-up, tax-free death benefits and the ability to remove life insurance from a taxable estate. Legislators and even the Bush administration have cast an avaricious eye in the direction of these potential funding sources, however briefly. Many, including the AALU, are concerned a federal government facing intense fiscal pressure will smack its lips over these temptations. The life insurance industry has said it needs a place at the federal table to defend these “threads.”

FEDERAL REGULATION: The planets are aligning here. Life insurance companies want a dependable national system after many years of fighting efforts to move away from a state system. Federal regulators have been howling outside the door at greater volume. Even the state commissioners are accepting at least a half-step with the Office for Insurance Information bill, which the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) endorsed. That bill contains the structure that could absorb the NAIC into a national, if not a federal, system. In fact, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., won a hard-fought re-election. But with the meltdown of confidence in financial corporations, the pendulum might be swinging with rockets strapped on and could go all the way to the Optional Federal Charter (OFC) or maybe even beyond optional. The OFC has been not on the back burner, but off the stove entirely for some time. The momentum might even overcome some reluctance within the Democratic party, chiefly in the person of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

MEDICARE ADVANTAGE: Things don’t look promising here. Obama has not only criticized this program but has gone so far as to say it was “defrauding” senior citizens. This is on top of growing Democratic disdain in the Congress.

HEALTH INSURANCE: Take all the arguments over the plans proposed by Obama and Sen. John McCain and toss them in the shredder. They all pre-supposed the need for bipartisan approval. Obama’s plan was to create a national insurance program administered by a National Health Insurance Exchange that individuals and small businesses could buy coverage from. It was supposed to be similar to the system available to federal employees. It would also act as a “watchdog.”

Employers who did not provide “meaningful” coverage would have to pay a fee to support the national program. Small businesses would be exempt from the requirement. But what constituted a small business? What is “meaningful” coverage? How would this national system work? How would it act as a “watchdog?” These were some of the questions we had before the election. We’re stuffing them into the shredder. It’s a new game now.

These are just some of the key issues concerning the insurance industry, but of course everything else affects the industry as we have seen with the sector shaken by the financial crisis. Amid the concerns about tax policy shifts and regulatory reform there is some solace to be found in a seemingly contrarian observation made by many, including the AALU president, Mike Corry: Businesses, especially life insurance, tend to do better under Democratic administrations. Before the election, Corry said that has been the case for about a half century, but he was not so sure if that still holds true with a Democrat relatively unchecked by heavily Democratic Congress. It looks like we’ll find out.

eHealth, Inc., the parent company of eHealthInsurance, one of our preferred partners, recently announced the release of a new study on the individual health insurance market.
The analysis provides facts on actual premiums paid for individual health insurance and the nature of accompanying plan benefits. The research, based on a nationwide sample of over 227,000 individual and family major medical policies that were purchased through eHealthInsurance and active in August 2007, revealed the following insights:

– The average monthly premium for individual policies was $158

– The average premium for family policies was $366

– The average deductible for individual policies was $1,972

– The average deductible for family policies was $2,610

– The majority of family policies had annual premiums between $3,400 and $4,650

– Half of all individual policy holders paid less than $130 per month for monthly premiums

– More than half of all family policy holders paid less than $300 per month for monthly premiums

– Women paid, on average, 18% more than men did for individual health insurance premiums

– The average plan lifetime limit was $3.9 million(1)

– A vast majority of individual and family policyholders had lab x-ray, emergency, prescription and chiropractic coverage

If you’re looking for a job, you might want to check out the insurance industry.  Why?  Because according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. insurance industry payrolls gained 2,500 positions from September to October 2008.

I always say that AccuQuote chooses not to participate in the recession. I should probably start saying that the insurance industry chooses not to participate in the recession.

If you’re in the Chicago-land area and you’re interested in an insurance job, check out our job openings

Wills and trusts help us to protect ourselves. These documents indicate who will make important decisions for us in the future. For this reason, understanding how wills and trusts work is extremely important. When do you need a will? When do you need a trust? What is the difference between the two? Suze Orman explains the ins and outs of this very important topic on her website and how a life insurance policy fits within these documents.

Once in a while, we have to toot our own horn.  In the December 2008 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, AccuQuote was name one of Kiplinger’s best web sites for life insurance.  Kiplinger sites AccuQuote as “an easy way to get term insurance rates from many of the top companies.”  Congratulations to all AccuQuote employees for helping make this happen!

November 12, 2008

Benefits of exercising your term conversion option

Description:

If you have life insurance, you probably have a term policy.  Most term policies come with a conversion option.  Byron Udell, a life insurance and annuity industry expert, is here today to explain what a conversion option is, why it’s important and when you should consider exercising it.

Size: 6.66 MB

Length: 7:16

Click here to download