One of the best investments a young man or woman can make is to purchase premium life insurance. It’s not something we think about, but life is short and sometimes the end comes earlier than expected. This can cause financial hardship in addition to emotional pain to those in your immediate family.

Life insurance can help with the financial impact of death, but people often don’t understand how it works and how much it costs.

How It Works 

Life insurance provides a large payment to beneficiaries when an insured person dies. The payout might be hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more), and that money is often free from federal income taxes. To get coverage, you submit an application, which typically involves answering health questions and may include a brief medical examination. Then, if approved, you pay premiums to a life insurance company in exchange for coverage.

Why Life Insurance Is Important 

If a spouse, children, or other loved ones depend on you, there’s a good chance you need life insurance. If you’re a wage-earner in the family, your death would leave dependents without a vital source of income. The result could be a domino effect of financial hardships that last for years.

This is because lost income makes it hard to save for goals like education, which can mean children enter the workforce with heavy student debt. It’s also much more difficult to save for retirement if a spouse or partner has to support a family on their own.

How Much Do You Need? 

There’s no way to know exactly how much money survivors will need. One way to arrive at this estimate, is to determine which expenses your dependents will need to pay, and for how long.

Survivors need to pay for housing and food, among other expenses. Ideally, the funds should also help loved ones save for financial goals like retirement or education costs. And it may be helpful to pay off debts (such as a home mortgage, auto loans, and student debt) or provide enough money to fund monthly payments for an extended period.

What Is The Best Life Insurance To Have 

The best type of life insurance is called term life insurance , and it guarantees a death benefit if you (the insured) die during a period of time that you specify. If you die after the term is over, the insurance company doesn’t pay. Pretty simple.

Whole life insurance tries to act like a savings or investment fund. This insurance is to help you build up an investment that could be tapped further down the line.

Here’s how it’s works : You overpay in the early years to build up your cash value. As you get older and your premiums go up, you use your cash value to help pay for your insurance.

When you have people who depend on you in life, insurance can be something very beneficial to the entire family. Remember life is short and you always want to be prepared for the best and worst outcomes