Life insurance myths
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, a Chartered Life Underwriter, or CLU, and 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."
Perhaps because we are so averse to contemplating our own mortality, certain myths have grown up around life insurance. Myths such as: Life insurance is a good investment. You can't bargain for a better rate. You can always expect full disclosure of commissions. And a guaranteed-issue life policy will always come to the rescue if you wait too long to purchase coverage.
We invited life underwriter Tony Steuer, the director of financial preparedness for the insurance consumer group United Policyholders, 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 life insurance myths.