Let's talk about your death.
Not much of a sales pitch, is it? Yet that's precisely the body under the sheet we're delicately avoiding when we consider buying life insurance.
"They call it life insurance but it's really death insurance. After all, you'll never live to collect," says Judith Hasenauer, principal at Blazzard & Hasenauer, P.C., a Florida law firm that advises insurance companies. "That's why it's often said that life insurance is sold, not bought."
Because we tend to shy away from our own mortality, certain myths have grown up around life insurance, several of them promulgated by the life insurance industry itself. Myths such as the idea that life insurance is a good investment. You can't negotiate a better rate. Consumers receive full disclosure. And if you wait too long, a guaranteed-issue life policy will save the day.
We invited life insurance underwriter, analyst and author Tony Steuer, along with life insurance actuary, former Vermont insurance commissioner and Consumer Federation of America expert James Hunt to join Hasenauer in playing pinata with these overstuffed myths about life insurance.
Batter up!