Life Expectancy
The average life expectancy for a person who was 65 years old in 2012 is 19.3 years – 20.5 years for women and 17.9 years for men.
When designing long term life insurance coverage, many advisors recommend paying higher premiums to provide coverage to age 100+. This increases costs for clients – often paying thousands of additional premiums for coverage past age 100 – which statistically is unnecessary.
With the flexibility of Universal Life policies, it may be appropriate to evaluate your potential life expectancy by reviewing your health history and taking into account your family’s past life expectancy.
You may be better off designing coverage to an age less than 100 to save premium dollars.
Since the coverage is flexible, a periodic review of your health status may dictate increasing premiums in the future to extend coverage or decreasing premiums to shorten coverage. It is not necessary to pay more premiums than necessary to the insurance company as the net life insurance benefit can remain level.
Please feel free to contact our office for a detailed analysis of how different flexible design options can save premium dollars.