An Ugly Indexed Universal Life Insurance Lawsuit

An Ugly Indexed Universal Life Insurance Lawsuit

In August of this year, two California residents filed a lawsuit against the Pacific Life Insurance Company alleging: Violation of Unfair Competition Law Business and Professions Code Fraud and Deceit Intentional Misrepresentation Negligent Misrepresentation Breach of Fiduciary Duty Professional Negligence The lawsuit seeks class-action status welcoming the possibility that the attorneys working for the plaintiffs …

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What is an Irrevocable Beneficiary?

What is an Irrevocable Beneficiary?

An irrevocable beneficiary in a life insurance contract is a person or entity named as beneficiary that a policy owner cannot remove or alter without the approval/agreement of the beneficiary.  Normally speaking, the beneficiary is not a party to the life insurance contract and has no authority over decisions the policy owner makes concerning him/her.  …

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Northwestern Mutual Announces 2021 Dividend

Northwestern Mutual Announces 2021 Dividend

The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company today announced its plans to pay participating policy owners a combined $6.2 billion in dividends in 2021.  This payout represents the largest total payout of dividends in Northwestern’s history and will most likely be the largest aggregate payout of dividends among all U.S. life insurers. Despite the headwinds Covid …

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How to Use Whole Life Insurance to Save for College

There are a number of ways to pay for a college education and today we want to spend time discussing how you can use whole life insurance to pay for college.  While certainly not a default option presented by the mainstream financial media, whole life insurance can work as a wonderful way to pay for college.

But keep in mind that using whole life to foot the bill for higher education comes with a few best practices you should understand.  To ensure that you extract the greatest amount of benefit from this strategy, we'll spend some time looking at how people use whole life insurance to pay for college while also giving you some insider knowledge on how to best set up your policy if this is your goal.

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Premium Financing Life Insurance

Premium Financing Life Insurance

Premium financing is a process of borrowing money to pay life insurance premiums.  I know this sounds strange, but there is a perfectly good reason behind the idea.  I’ll forewarn you, however, that this good idea only takes flight among those with substantial assets. Financing life insurance premiums works to minimize the net out-of-pocket cost …

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Impending Whole Life Insurance Doom

Impending Whole Life Insurance Doom

Whole life insurance policies often rely heavily on the issuing company’s ability and willingness to pay dividends.  While whole life policies do have considerably strong guaranteed features, the payment of dividends dramatically alters the net value a policy owner can extract from the contract. These dividends play a crucial role in augmenting cash values as …

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Universal Life Insurance Death Benefit Options

Universal Life Insurance Death Benefit Options

Universal life insurance provides the policy owner with two different death benefit options.  One option is a constant or level death benefit, while the other increases over time based on some feature of the policy (either cash value accumulation of premiums paid). When you apply for a universal life insurance policy, you will need to …

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How much can I Borrow from my Life Insurance Policy?

How much can I Borrow from my Life Insurance Policy?

You can usually borrow around 95% of a life insurance policy’s cash surrender value in any given year.  The rules that govern life insurance policy loans do vary from company to company, however, so it’s important to understand a few basic rules about how much and when specifically you’ll have the option to borrow money …

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The Myth of the Rising Cost of Universal Life Insurance

The Universal Life Insurance Myth

For years, those who favor whole life insurance have told us that universal life insurance has an evil side. While the product affords the policyholder ample opportunity to adjust premiums as he/she desires, it also possesses the nasty cost of “shifting the risk back onto the policyholder,” thus (a favorite line of mine) “taking the …

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