Life Insurance for Parents

 
 
 

Prefer to speak with someone and ask about your specific situation? we’re here to be a free resource for you.

Want even more details? Check out our life insurance buyer’s guide and we’ll walk you through the process from A to Z.

Why do all parents need life insurance?

  • Dying can be devastating to loved ones finances. No one wants to leave a legacy of debt to those they care about.

  • It costs over $284,000* to raise a child from birth to age 18. That is the cost while utilizing public school and including no funding for college. It will cost even more if you want to provide for higher education and care for them for an additional 4 years at least.

    • *$284,570 Expenditures on Children by Families, 2015 US Dept of Agriculture

  • Someone in their 30s making $50,000 a year will make 1.5 million dollars over a 30 year time frame. That amount is if you never receive a raise during your 30 years of work and doesn’t account for inflation, both of which will make that number much larger. Not having at least some portion of that protected is a major loss to your family.

  • Even if you have a high income, life insurance is important to have in order to protect your wealth and to lock in future financial planning options while you are still healthy.

  • Life insurance isn’t just to pay for a funeral.

  • Employee policies or those offered through your work are often only a year or two of income. If you have children needing 15-20 years of support, this obviously isn’t enough. These sorts of work policies are called “supplemental policies” for a reason. You’re going to want a personal policy to fill in the coverage gap.

  • Even if a spouse doesn’t work, they still need coverage. Non-working spouses mean big savings to the family in all sorts of ways. Be sure to consider the outsourcing costs of daycare, homemaking, and other costs that will result due to the loss of a non-working spouse.

  • A spouse will lose their husband or wife’s income and often times the household bills stay the same.

  • Often times we become sick before we die. Months or even years of medical bills and missed work by either spouse can result in losing anything resembling your current lifestyle.

  • Whose children will you become responsible for in the event of their death? Are you going to be responsible for a sibling or close friend’s children? Does your budget and future plans have their cost built into it? Make sure those whose responsibilities you will be taking on don’t leave you in a major bind, and make it so you aren’t able to provide for your own children. Will taking on more children than planned ruin your finances or keep you from ever retiring? It’s only a few minutes of their time for a lifetime of protection. Make sure they protect you as well as their children.

  • Social security only pays a death benefit of $255* (in 2019, *SSA.gov) to a surviving spouse.

Life insurance allows us to protect our families from the burdens of loss of income, medical bills, and other expenses that will occur when we leave. It allows for the preservation of the lifestyle that we have worked hard to build for our family.

what is life insurance?

  • Life policies allow you to pay a small amount of money into an insurance pool with a group of people your age and similar health. This is in order to pay your family a very large sum of tax free money should you pass away or become seriously ill.

  • Policies are designed for people from birth to age 85 for all health profiles. Typically term policies run $50,000 of coverage and up into the millions depending on income for 10-35 years of coverage. The higher the amount and longer the coverage, the higher your monthly cost will be.

  • Some insurance companies/carriers require medical exams and other do not. You can receive up to $500,000 in coverage without a medical exam by choosing the right carrier.

  • Features included can help take care of bills associated with serious medical issues while you are still alive at no additional cost. Your children or the ability to buy additional coverage in the future can all be protected with various options on your policy.

  • Easy to apply and you can be approved over the phone and online, or because we are local, we can sit with you at your kitchen table.

How does life insurance work?

  • Think of life insurance as a math problem. Insurance companies use the law of large numbers and death statistics to build a policy that will protect your family if something happens to you.

    • For a hypothetical example, we may know that 1 out of 100 people in a group will die this year. We just don’t know which one. If the family of the 1 unlucky person to die would like $1,000 dollars in the event of their death, then all 100 members of the group would need to contribute $10(or .83 cents a month) to the insurance money pool that year for there to be a $1,000 payout. This is the basis of all life insurance and how costs are determined.

  • Your age, health, tobacco use, and gender are the main factors that determine pricing.

  • Once you purchase a policy, in almost all cases the price won’t go up during the term period, or if its a permanent policy, it won’t ever go up if properly funded. The younger and healthier you are when you purchase, the cheaper the policy will be.

  • Don’t wait or use your need to purchase life insurance as a motivation to get healthier by losing weight or to stop smoking. Yes, you may receive a better health rating when you start your policy but you can easily adjust your health rating after you are covered. You may have a health issue in the time you delay and lose the ability to purchase protection at all. You can always ask to be reevaluated by the insurance carrier a year or years later after losing weight or making other health adjustments and receive a better health rating. With that better health rating will come a better price on your current policy.

  • Having a good height to weight ratio, cholesterol, blood pressure, and other vitals will help your pricing and poor numbers will cause your pricing to go up.

  • Various diseases will also increase your pricing or prevent you from receiving coverage at all. Cancer and heart disease can prevent you from receiving coverage at all from most carriers, where as diabetes may have a large or small affect depending on the severity of your case.

  • Life experts, like at Gateway, will help you navigate any health issues, as well as put you with the friendliest insurance carrier for your health issue. Some are friendlier to those of us with a few extra pounds and some are friendlier to those with diabetes. It’s our specialty placing you with the right carrier and saving you money and time in the process.

  • Confidentiality is important to us. We will not disclose your name or personal information when we are shopping for pricing thus protecting you from sales people and potential negative information getting out.

Why is gateway the best option for me and those i care about?

  • Gateway has nationwide access to nearly 50 different life insurance carriers.

  • Many websites and TV commercial 1-800 numbers have direct tie-ins to insurance companies and will have a bias in their recommendations that might not be in your best interest.

  • When you speak with an insurance carrier directly, they are going to tell you that their product is the best regardless of its fit for your unique situation.

  • Gateway is not beholden to any insurance company and works as your agent to find the best options.

    We are not here to sell as specific brand name, our focus is to find the company that will give you most amount of coverage for the lowest cost.

How much does a Life Insurance policy cost?

  • We understand that being on a tight budget can be stressful. Saving money where you can is important and its why Gateway is here to help.

  • Every life insurance company has a different set of criteria for pricing based on age, gender, height, weight, and health. There are quite a few different plans out there and determining which is best for us and our family can be a daunting task.

  • Gateway takes care of the shopping for you. We explain the pros and cons and give you our unbiased opinion.

  • We walk you through the application process from start to finish and can get you back to your busy schedule knowing you received great coverage at a great price.

Can i find a cheaper price by going directly to the insurance carrier?

  • NO. There are no mark-ups or rebates with this type of insurance. The pricing is set at the state level and does not change because you worked with Gateway.

  • Gateway does not charge you to do your insurance shopping for you. You will not receive any bill for insurance from Gateway.

  • The only determining factors of how much the insurance costs are age, health, tobacco use and insurance carrier.

  • You can spend your valuable time calling up individual insurance companies for days dealing with sales people, or you can let us take care of it for you.

  • Gateway doing the shopping for you means you won’t have 10 different insurance companies calling you at dinner time every night and flooding your email with spam long after you have your plan in place.

    Instead of giving your personal details to someone in a call center who will never speak with you again, you have access to a trusted local advisor who you will know by name. An advisor who can remind you of details about your coverage years from now, answer questions for you and your family members, and help your family when the time comes for them to make a claim.

what if I’m worried about my personal information getting out

  • We will not pass on personal information about you while we are shopping for your policy. We are able to search through pricing based on your health and lifestyle without disclosing your details to any insurance company.

  • If tobacco use is a concern, we have carriers that are more friendly based on what type of tobacco you use. Whether it is cigarettes, smokeless, vaping or the occasional cigar, we can find you the best rate so that you are not lumped in with a higher rate that you don’t need to pay.

  • Marijuana use isn’t a problem either. Some insurance carriers are keeping up with the times and updating their treatment of marijuana accordingly. We have carriers that will treat you as if you don’t partake at all. These carriers will not exclude you from the best rating possible due to marijuana use. Current laws in your state will not affect your acceptance.

  • We are happy to have a confidential discussion about any concerns you may have about your lifestyle or personal health issues.

Gateway is the perfect company to reach out to for someone looking to take care of their loved ones. Gateway does the shopping for you and you are not subject to mark ups or fees for insurance from Gateway.

Please take a moment to get a quote and let us prove it to you.