I have life insurance through my employer, do I need another life insurance policy?

One of the more common responses I get when discussing Life Insurance with our clients is that they already have a policy through their employers. If you do have a group plan through your employer, that's great! These plans are usually very affordable and I will usually reccomend that you max out the coverage limit to take full advantage of that benefit. Most companies will allow you to carry up to 3 times your annual salary as the coverage limit for these policies.

That being said, I strongly recommend that our clients also carry an additional life insurance policy through a company like Allstate because the policies that are available through employers are not portable, meaning you can't take them with you should you change jobs or worse lose your job. A recent study conducted by the US Bureau of Labor found that people are changing jobs every 2.3 years!*That is much lower than most people realize! When you change jobs, you lose that life insurance policy and your new employer may or may not offer that same benefit.

With unemployment as high as it is today, millions of Americans are without any form of life insurance. Some folks who spent years or decades with an employer only to be laid off due to the current state of the economy are looking for life insurance and they are finding that because they are older now the rates are much higher and in some cases they don't qualify for life insurance due to health issues that developed later in life.

For more information on life insurance and how you can prepare and protect your family, contact me at 760-438-4442 or mmcdonald@allsate.com. Don't wait until it is too late.

Sources:
*http://www.working.com/vancouver/resources/2006supersection/story.html?id=5f4de417-a881-471b-be2b-9f539f8501a9&k=46120