Term Life Insurance—is life insurance a good idea or just an old-fashioned financial scam?

Face it. No one wants to learn about life insurance. It’s complicated and you can almost guarantee you’re going to feel like you’re not catching the small print and will make a bad decision. It usually involves hours sifting over documents with someone you know has excellent sales training. And, it involves facing up to your own death.

Since insurance is an expense for something you can’t enjoy, most people would like to ignore the need for it. As an investment vehicle, it’s not the most aggressive, and people usually buy it at a time when they really should be looking at riskier investments that earn much higher rates. However, the low returns aside, most people come back to having life insurance for one simple reason: it’s the cheapest way to make sure  your family is taken care of in case of the catastrophic death of one or both of the parents. The worst nightmare for any new parent, not counting a loss of a child, is that their own children would be alone, penniless and vulnerable at a young age. We are programmed as parents to want to insure the security of our kids in every way possible.

Term life insurance is the most frequently purchased type of life insurance and the most affordable. Before you purchase life insurance, it’s a good idea to determine your insurance needs. Why do you need to purchase term life insurance? When does it make sense to have insurance coverage for your family, yourself, or your spouse?

Term life insurance covers the insured for a selected period—terms of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 years are usually available. You will only pay for the insurance during the period it covers and if the insured passes away during the term of the insurance, his or her survivors will receive the full amount of coverage as a payout.

This means term insurance makes sense for businesses and individuals who are looking for coverage over a certain period. It is often used to protect young families from the death of a major wage earner. It can also be appropriate for companies who need to insure important employees or secure a loan.

Are you too busy to apply for life insurance? Don’t want the hassle of completing a medical exam? Need $150,000 worth of coverage or less? You may want quick term insurance. If you are age 60 or younger and want to obtain term life insurance both quickly and easily online, a quick issue term insurance policy is the right solution for you.

If you want to purchase a life insurance policy quickly, before a trip away for example, term insurance is available online and can be purchased in as little as 15 minutes. The online facility reduces the policy processing time to zero. You fill out a short online questionnaire and within minutes, if you qualify, you can purchase and print your policy from home. You can be covered within fifteen minutes.

Quick issue life insurance is every bit as secure as regular term life insurance. Because there is no medical exam, the flipside is that the premium rates are slightly higher. However, the increase in cost may be worth it in terms of time saved and hassle avoided.