Journey to Life Insurance Part 2: Easier Than I Thought

What signing up for life insurance felt like.

Recap

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about why anyone would need life insurance and why I felt this was the right time for me to purchase it personally.  In summary, life insurance will provide enormous piece of mind in case of my early demise, which is not likely but is certainly not impossible.  The purpose of insurance is to protect you and your family from unthinkable things that could potentially devastate your finances, and that’s exactly what life insurance will be for me and my family.

Dirt cheap

When we last left our hero, he went to Quotacy and received some very accurate quotes for life insurance.  All without entering any personally identifying information.  I want to stress the awesomeness of this, as every other site I went to asked for some type of personal information such as my name, address or social security number.  Not so with Quotacy, and that went a long way in trusting them.

After getting some quotes, which ended up being 100% accurate in the end, I realized something big:

Life insurance is CHEAP.

This obviously doesn’t hold true for everyone, but in my situation it was extremely affordable, to the point that not getting it would be financially foolish.  My main reason for getting life insurance was to financially cover my young family in the case of my early death.  This doesn’t mean that they will have the ability to live like royalty if that situation arises, but money won’t be an issue.

With that in mind, I chose a $1,000,000 policy for a 25 year term.  I assume that in 25 years we will have minimal to no debt, will have a healthy amount in savings and our kids will be more or less self sufficient, which means there will be no need for life insurance anymore.  This is an enormous piece of mind that I assumed would cost a good amount, but it ended up being just under $500…per year!  In monthly terms, that’s just under $42 a month, which is a third of what I pay for cable.

What an incredible value.  Now, I know the fact that I’m young-ish and healthy-ish probably helped in keeping that premium low, but that’s the whole reason you get insurance!  Pay up front when times are good so you’re covered when times get bad.  I really wish I had taken the plunge sooner knowing how cheap it is.  So the moral of the story is not to let the cost of life insurance hold you back.  Most people won’t even feel the pinch.

Paperwork…kind of

After I decided to go with the aforementioned policy with a very reputable company (Quotacy only works with the best), I had to answer some personal information to get my file started.  I got an email that my request was received and I would start receiving some forms to look over and sign over the next few days.

Life insurance seems big and scary, so I braced myself for a mountain of paperwork showing up in my mailbox in the next week.  But I received a total of 3 emails over the next few days: one from the friendly Quotacy rep telling me they’re getting started on my policy, one with a couple of forms that I had to electronically sign, and one saying they received the signed forms.  This was literally all of the paperwork I had to do upfront.

I then received a call from a representative of the company, and for about 15 minutes I had to go over some demographic and medical history.  This was such a painless and easy process, mainly because we are fortunate enough to live in the age that we do.  I imagine signing up for life insurance 50 years ago required a lot more legwork, so I’m glad this was able to go so smoothly.  There really wasn’t even one instance where I felt that I had to go “out of my way” to do something.  It was all very convenient.

The Dreaded Health Exam

After my phone conversation with the rep, she let me know that the person in charge of doing my health exam would contact me soon to set up an appointment to come to my house and take some medical information.  This sounded like a pretty serious and intense part of the process (it wasn’t intense).  But I will go into detail (but not TMI detail), in the third and final part of my journey to life insurance.  Stay tuned!

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Comments

  1. Looking forward to reading about the health exam portion of your life insurance. It’s nice they are willing to come to your home to take your medical info.

    • Syed says

      Yeah that was really convenient. Stay tuned!

  2. Jen says

    Not requiring personal info upfront is huge! Thanks for sharing your journey – but your link doesn’t work :-/ the one in your part 1 does though.

    • Syed says

      I agree it was refreshing to see that they didn’t ask any personal info early on. Thanks for the heads up the link should work now. Appreciate the comment!

  3. I completely agree about CHEAP – too many people assume that it will cripple you financially to take a policy. In South Africa, some of the (admittedly cheaper) policies cost about R80 ($3) per month. The more you pay, the more cover you get. Its really does suit people in all stages of life.

    • Syed says

      Wow that is pretty cheap. Especially compared to other common types of insurance like auto and health, life insurance here in the US is a steal. Thanks for the comment.

  4. The actual process wasn’t bad. The issue for me is that I’m bipolar. I’m well-medicated, but it upped my quote. I now pay $50 a month to get $100k coverage.

    It’s enough to cover our mortgage in case anything happens to me. (He’s on disability.) So it covers what matters and gives him a year or so worth of financial breathing room.

    For most people, life insurance is ridiculously cheap, which is awesome. Folks need to lock in their rates early.

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