If you want to know the future of the economy, just ask a Millennial.
This generation, born in the 1980s and 1990s, has transformed the expectation of how and why we buy certain products. With a preference for digital services, Millennials have influenced the business models of many companies – new and old, which are adjusting to accommodate the preferences of this generation.
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Understanding your life insurance needs is actually pretty easy. You have to simply ask yourself, “Do I have people who rely on me for financial support?” If the answer is, “Yes” then you probably need some amount of life insurance coverage.
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26: The average age women have their first child*
27: The average age women get married
29: The average age men get married
33: The average age Americans buy their first homes
36: The average age of a Haven Term life insurance policy owner
When you pay for something that benefits another, that’s by definition a selfless act of kindness. Perhaps the joy of helping people is exactly why I have spent so much time writing over the past seven years.
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Today’s life insurance is not the same as our parents. There are many reasons why young or old, single or married queer people will buy it.
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Whether you’ve recently graduated or have been in the workforce for years, at some point, you may be thinking of going to grad school.
Grad school can be a great next step to boost your career or try your hand at something else. The only problem? Grad school can cost a pretty penny. I should know — I took out an additional $58,000 in student loans for my master’s degree, which helped me fulfill my dream of going to NYU.
If you’re thinking of going to grad school, you’re probably aware that you may have to take on student loans to make your dreams a reality. When you’re young and single, those student loans usually aren’t a consideration for anyone but yourself (unless you needed a co-signer to get them.) But, if you’re married and taking out student loans, you’re potentially taking on a debt burden that would impact your spouse and children.
If you’re single with a loan co-signer or married with children and taking on debt, did you know that you might need life insurance?
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I’m 32, single and gay. By all stereotypical notions of why people buy life insurance, I have no business writing this. People usually hear “Now that you’re married, you should consider life insurance” or “Well now that you have children, don’t you want to make sure they’re protected?” In fact, if you look at how life insurance is typically marketed, a happy and carefree single person (who may be gay) rarely shows up. But despite all this, I have three life insurance policies.
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If you have ever read my blog before, you know that as a financial planner, I value life insurance as an integral part of my clients’ financial lives. Before training as a financial advisor, I honestly never gave much thought to life insurance. However, now I know that it’s a valuable tool to help protect you against certain financial risks.
While I value life insurance as a smart way to financially protect your loved ones, I don’t value it for every client; and for the most part I rarely recommend it to my millennial clients.
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I’ve always loved that saying, “Not all heroes wear capes.” It’s usually accompanied by pictures of pizza deliverymen, the people who work at Chick-fil-A, or various other ways of saying we love people that make life better (or in the case of my examples, more delicious).
Going into an interview with Jeff Butcher, Senior Claims Examiner at MassMutual, I didn’t realize I’d be so touched by the role of a claims examiner. To be honest, when I really thought about it, I thought it must be a pretty depressing job. A claims examiner is the person who handles the payout of a life insurance policy. They deal with death and loss every day.
You’ll soon see Jeff doesn’t view his role that way.
The reason I spoke with Jeff is because MassMutual issues the Haven Term policy and, thus, is responsible for paying death benefits. (That’s a good thing for our customers because when you buy life insurance, you want to know the policy is from a company that has a long history of financial strength and timely payment of claims.
We get a lot of questions from our customers and applicants about how the claims process works. Luckily, we have access to claim examiners like Jeff.
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We know life insurance applications may seem long. And trust me, we’ve worked with our parent company MassMutual to try and make the Haven Term application as streamlined as possible.
That said, these questions are absolutely necessary to verify your identity, determine your health, review your medical background and ultimately, determine what rate class you’ll be in.
If you haven’t purchased a life insurance policy before (or at least peeked at the start of an application) you might be surprised to see that questions can range from asking for your Social Security Number and occupation to hobbies and what medications you’re taking.
As a customer service representative at Haven Life, I’ve communicated with plenty of customers who are seeking details and reasoning behind the in-depth and oh-so-personal questions. It’s understandable and also very explainable.
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