Lately I've been doing some research on the costs of dying, or what costs you'll immediately incur should a loved one die suddenly.

I remember when my grandmother (Phyllis Read) passed away, age 83, back in 1995 my dad arranged the funeral.. I didn't ask about the cost detail of the funeral, as I didn't feel it was appropriate to ask. My dad mentioned that the sandwiches, dainties and coffee for the family and friends visiting, cost upwards of $3,500. I looked around and saw maybe 200 sandwiches, and a couple pots of coffee.

I wasn't about to ask my dad if he haggled prices for these funeral services. His mother had just passed away. That's the angle that the funeral companies don't mind.

I don't think my grandmother had life insurance, but she did have savings in place to cover all costs.

My dad said in passing that, "this is what she wanted as her last request. A nice funeral where friends and family would be gathered." My dad didn't spare any expenses out of complete respect for his mother.

I never forgot about those exhorbitant funeral expenses, and was reminded about them again today.

How many people think about funeral expenses. I get a feeling that most people don't do "funeral shopping" until after the loved one dies.

The immediate need for knowing funeral costs comes at the same time as compiling information about the loved one. Compiling the basic records of life like military service records, social security numbers, life insurance policies, mother's maiden name, divorce or wedding documents, etc. is an ordeal we avoid whenever possible. When death occurs avoidance is no longer possible - there is an immediate need for those records.

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Life insurance news and headlines for December 21, 2006

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I was looking around today at various life insurance blogs to see what people were writing about.

Lindquist.com had this post regarding Life Insurance Settlements being regulated.

It seems that if people are selling their life insurance policies to cash out of them, these transactions are regulated by NASD rules and are teh same as secureties transactions.

I'm going to keep my ears perked up for more about this.

Member Obligations with Respect to the Sale of Existing Variable Life Insurance Policies to Third Parties
Executive Summary

Sales of existing life insurance policies to third parties?often referred to as "life settlements"?have grown exponentially in recent years, and that trend appears likely to continue. The purpose of this Notice is to remind firms and associated persons that life settlements involving variable insurance policies are securities transactions, and firms and associated persons involved in such transactions are subject to applicable NASD rules.

Suffering from a life threatening disease and want to settle your life insurance policy early?
Viatical settlements are also becoming more and more popular with seniors and people suffering from life threatening illnesses.

According to this site:

A viatical settlements is a large amount of cash given to terminally ill people, known as viators. This money is given in exchange for the death benefits of their life insurance. The word viatical or viator comes from a Latin origin, known as viaticum, which means provisions of a journey.

These sorts of settlements are often found attractive to viators (sellers) because of the fact that they will receive a large amount of money during their final days. Viatical settlements are especially attractive to investors for their high rates of return.

Dictionary.com defines viator as:
A person with terminal or a life-threatening illness who sells their life insurance policy at a steep discount to an insurance firm to pay for their health-care costs or improve their quality of life.

Investopedia Commentary
A viator will usually receive a percentage of the policy's face value, around 50-70%, in a cash payment. This is one way in which an individual is able to receive money to help with medical coverage.

If you're suffering from a life threatening illness, a viatical settlement may be the way to go. This may also be the case if you're the only member of your family and you don't have anybody who relies on you financially any more. It may be a good idea to cash out of your life insurance policy while you're still able to enjoy the money.

Get a life insurance quote

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I am inviting anybody life insurance blog writers and law blog writers to come and visit on my blog.

In 2007 we will be covering many topics in life insurance. Along with talking about different life insurance products, I will be covering instances where people died an untimely death and hopefully had life insurance.

I will also be excited to visit your blogs and comment on your topics.

Again, if you have a blog that talks about life insurance, legal law aspects of life insurance, and any other related fields to life insurance, I am inviting you to drop by and visit on my life insurance blog.

The interesting thing is, the more I blog about life insurance, the more I learn about life insurance. Adding the legal and related industries components to this blog will help our readers get a much better grasp of the different aspects of life insurance.

BLOGGERS WANTED:
Life Insurance Bloggers Wanted
Legal Bloggers Wanted
Funeral and Death related industry bloggers wanted

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Cancer is such a horrible disease. One moment you don't have it, and then all of a sudden, you're diagnosed with it. As we're talking about sources of untimely death, Cancer is a leading cause in this day and age.

Cancer is terrible because it ravages a family emotionally, and then financially. As a person is disabled because of cancer they can no longer earn the living that they once enjoyed. If they die from cancer hopefully they had insurance in place to take care of their surviving family members.

Plain and simple, cancer is another cause of untimely deaths where it is paramount that people had life insurance in place. It is everybody's worst fear to die an untimely death caused by cancer. The purpose of this article is to further illustrate that cancer can happen to anybody, and it's good to have life insurance protection in place to guard financially against such a terrible disease causing death.

See also:

• Canadian Cancer Society
  
• Cancer Statistics
  
• Tabacco Facts - Cancer
  
• Cancer Causing Agents
  

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I found this on the Saskatchewan Consumer Protection website.

This discussion of funerals and cremations goes hand in hand with life insurance especially if one has just passed away. The first things you think about when a loved one passes away is: What do I do now? Who do I contact for help in this situation? Where are all of the life insurance policies located? What should I expect of the funeral company that I've hired.

Where as all people in the funeral industry are highly respectful of the deceased and the surviving families, it's good to know in advance what is expected of funeral homes at the time of death.

The Funeral and Cremation Services Act
The Funeral and Cremation Services Act incorporates provisions which were previously in The Saskatchewan Embalmers Act and The Prepaid Funeral Services Act and adds provisions governing funeral homes and crematoria. The Act:

• establishes a Funeral and Cremation Services Council with members (both elected by industry and publicly appointed) to administer the Act. The Council operates under the general supervision of a Superintendent of Funeral and Cremation Services appointed by the Minister;
  
• provides bylaw-making powers for the Council to set standards of practice, with review of the bylaws by the Superintendent;
  
• requires licensing of persons providing services under the Act, including embalmers, funeral directors and salespersons selling prepaid contracts, as well as owners of funeral homes, crematoria and transfer services;
  
• prohibits the disposition of human remains at any place other than a cemetery, by cremation or as otherwise provided in the regulations;
  
• sets out, in order of priority, which person is the authorized decision-maker with respect to the disposition of the remains of a deceased person;
  
• prohibits licensees from representing that goods or services are needed if they are not or from charging a fee for goods or services not authorized by the purchaser (unless they are required by law);
  
• requires licensees to make itemized price lists of their goods and services available to the public;
  
• continues the prepaid services assurance fund established under The Prepaid Funeral Services Act and provides for payment from the fund for claims arising out of a contract;
  
• continues the ten day cooling-off period for prepaid funeral services contracts, and other cancellation rights, and also applies these rules to prepaid cremation services contracts.

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Learning about death helps us understand why we need life insurance!
This week I've been doing quite a bit of research on how people die, where they die, and what happens if they die in an unexpected place at an unexpected time.

While filling up for gas today at 6:30 am the gas attendant asked me how my day was so far. I said "it was great , and that my mission this week was to learn about death" . I told him that I needed to learn how people die so that I could write articles for my life insurance website.

Knowing that I wasn't some type of crank, he starts to tell me about his that his aunt and uncle were Romeo and Yvonne (Bonnie) Laforge. These are the same folks who were murdered in a double homicide in STURGEON FALLS Ontario. LaForge Homicide

He also went on to talk about his other family member who was killed in a car accident after they were a car collision with moose

TRAGIC, UNTIMELY SOLEMN DEATHS
These are some stories of tragic untimely deaths that most people over 20 years of age could tell about. somebody knows somebody who had an untimely accidental death.

Respectfully, I asked the young fellow if his relatives who died tragically had any life insurance. I asked him if he knew the costs related to these deaths.?

After a tragedy such as the ones described above, wouldn't it be horrible if the surrounding family members would be stuck with funeral bills, having to pay debts, taxes and any other costs associated with these peoples untimely death.

This week I am contacting lawyers offices, funeral homes and life insurance carriers to research what actually happens when somebody dies in an untimely fashion and doesn't have life insurance. I want to know the actual downside to the surrounding loved ones in this circumstance.

What are the actual costs of accidental death. Can family members and friends handle these costs out of their current budget.? Do you have to pay for the funeral arrangement right away. That could cost $10,000 -$15,000 depending on the type of funeral. etc

I also want to know the benefits of having a life insurance policy in place to the surrounding loved ones, friends and family.

I will report back as soon as I get replies back from my funeral home, life insurance, and lawyer contacts.

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I'm starting to research into an article regarding making provisions for the death of loved one during the christmas holiday.

I'm contacting funeral homes around the U.S. and Canada to get some ideas as to their advice on how to proceed should a loved one die during the christmas holiday.

The Scenario:
You're visiting relatives during the christmas holiday. You're either at their house or your house and you're visiting from another state or province.

A visiting relative passes away while he or she is staying at your place.

The questions I raise are:
1) Do you contact the deceased's life insurance company right away?
2) Should you plan the funeral right away?
3) If I contact the life insurance company do I have to pay right away?

In the next few days, I will be contacting funeral homes, life insurance carriers and more to get these questions answered squarely.

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It's christmas time and at the same time I need to make my contribution to this life insurance wealth of information :)

I thought I would have a look around for blogs and sites that talk about Christmas and Insurance.

The christmas time of year does bring about some hazards that people should think about such as being careful with household products, fire safety with christmas trees etc.

Let's see what these sites have to save about christmas time and the various types of insurance.

A site that is named http://www.christmas-insurance.com/
- This is a small site that's claim to fame is that their URL is christmas-insurance.com. Hilarious.

Lena Wee - Christmas Insurance
- Another site where the owner of the brokerage is named Christmas.

Christmas Travelling Insurance
- This page recommends that people remember to purchase trip insurance when they're travelling for christmas. Millions of people travel all over the world to visit loved ones during this time of year. It's a time of year that you don't need any extra financial surprises, especially if you're out of country.

Christmas cards for life insurance agents
- This site promotes Christmas cards for life insurance agents to send to their clients. Well... everybody needs to stay in touch and give good cheer, this time of year!

A poem for insurance professionals - cute!
- This is a humorous poem for life insurance agents to help them check out the risk factor of their clients christmas items. Nicely done.

Pet insurance at Christmas
- This is an article about getting pet insurance at christmas time. It makes sense to avoid over-spending on illness and injury when you already have to consider the everyday expenses of food, grooming, property damage, kennelling and routine vaccinations. Just remember, a pet is for life, not just for Christmas.

There you have it, a quick look at how some sites are talking about insurance and christmas.

Personally I think it's important to do your risk management before the holidays start. If you're visiting with relatives and friends, you want the time to be filled with warmth and love, and not about worry about what happens if something goes wrong.

As well, it's nice to know that if something does go wrong, you'll have the most peace because you've got all your bases covered.

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Looking for a job in life insurance. Aviva and HSBC OKed to set up insurance branches China. China is hiring life insurance agents! I can imagine that just as the rest of the economy is exploding in China, the life insurance industry is going to experience some phenomenal growth. There's a huge market place of over 1.3+ billion people in China (According to www.cia.gov). I'm sure all of the life insurance carriers are drooling over the opportunity to expand into China. That's an interesting bit of news.

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Profits are up despite the fact that prices are down. These are the headlines today with term life insurance. This is why it's important to shop around for the best life insurance rates.

Rates are based on various life insurance carrier companies and how well they're doing financially. Sometimes that's what it comes down to. The profitability of the life insurance company and also the life insurance companies specialty.

Some companies specialize in different types of risks.

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I just found this article regarding life insurance in Ontario.

Veil lifted on life insurance agents and brokers

JAMES DAW

As property insurers and their sales agents prepare to strip naked, the sales commissions in the life insurance business are like a man in a tent.

It's obvious the man is in there, but you can't tell from his shadow how big he is, or whether he is menacing or friendly.

Starting this week, new regulations in Ontario will require life agents and brokers to open the tent flap a bit, and expose more about their financial motivations.

It's just by coincidence that the new Regulation 347/04 of the Insurance Act came into force Monday, so soon after New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer turned the illegal acts of a few brokerage and insurance company employees into a sweeping denunciation of established industry practices. But the timing was impeccable.

New requirements and prohibitions are intended to assure consumers that their agent or broker will have a minimum level of training, and will provide enough information to help judge whether sales recommendations are unduly influenced by self-interest.

Many agents would already be subject to codes of conduct because of their professional standing with ( Advocis - Financial Advisors Association of Canada) or the Financial Planners Standards Council (FPSC), which controls use of the Certified Financial Planner designation.

But not everyone is a CFP or Chartered Life Underwriter. So Ontario is now requiring that everyone who is granted a licence to sell life or accident and sickness insurance must meet certain standards. They must: Disclose in writing the names of all insurers they represent.

Disclose in writing any conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest associated with the transaction or agent's recommendation.

Refrain from using inducements, coercion, undue influence, false, misleading or simply incomplete statements to make a sale.

Refrain from inducing clients to stop payments, remove cash or take a loan on an existing policy in order to sell a new policy where that would not be in the client's best interests.

Grant Swanson, executive director of licensing and market conduct with the Financial Services Commission of Ontario, said the conflict of interest rule will have broad application.

It's not intended to force agents to provide a list of commission scales unless a difference in pay structure could influence, or might be perceived by a third party to have an influence on what recommendation the agent might make.

For example, he said, the agent should disclose if the sale of a particular product would put the agent over a certain sales target that would qualify him or her to win a trip.

A broker should also disclose that he or she puts the bulk of his clients with a particular insurer if an additional sale would increase his or her compensation for that and other policies sold that year.

But in some cases, policies from different insurers may be virtually identical in features and price. It may not matter to the consumer that the product the agent recommends will earn a larger sales commission, said Swanson.

Jim Bullock, a veteran life agent and registrar of the course provider, the Peel Institute of Applied Finance, said agents might run afoul of the regulation if they persuaded a client not to cancel a policy without disclosing that an early cancellation would require the agent to return his or her sales commission.

Swanson said regulators have not discussed the particular scenario described by Bullock, but he said: "Our recommendation has been: If in doubt, disclose."

Agents may still be able to justify a recommendation that will earn larger sales commissions simply because the type of product - such as a whole life or universal life policy - is more suited to a client's needs or desires than a less expensive and remunerative product such as Term-100.

(All three provide permanent insurance, but not all have the same flexibility to omit monthly payments or recover money if the client no longer sees a need for permanent insurance or as much coverage.)

Terry Taylor, chief operating officer of Advocis, said the public should realize that different levels of compensation for different products are not fundamentally wrong.

Compensation levels correspond with the complexity of the product and client's needs. "The more complex the product, the more advice that needs to be attached to it," said Taylor. The agent helps to find the right product and calculate the right amount of coverage.

Consumers have always been free to ask agents about the companies they represent and the type of compensation they receive, said Taylor. His group would have preferred that the province had merely required agents to have a professional designation with a code of ethics that calls for the agent to put the interests of the client first.

But Swanson said the advantage of the regulation is that FSCO Ontario has an effective track record with enforcement, along with the right to levy fines through the courts.

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It's good to see that $500,000 policies are becoming more and more affordable for people in Ontario. With the cost of housing going through the roof in Toronto and area, mortgages are also skyrocketing. There is just simply more to insurance with your term life insurance policy in Ontario. As always we recommend purchasing term life insurance to insure a mortgage instead of mortgage insurance as it's more cost effective all around.

A $500,000 (half million dollar) mortgage is no longer a huge mortgage. Add on top of that credit card debt and car loans, it's easy to see why it's important that the cost of $500,000 20 year term life insurance policies needs to be the lowest ever. Get a quote here today from Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia.

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Some seniors are trusting people. Even if you're over the age of 65 it's still important to check out companies and investments, life insurance policies etc, even though sometimes it's hard to read through long and drawn out contracts, terms of service etc. "Risky viatical settlements (interests in the life insurance policies of supposedly terminally ill people)". It amazes me that people would take advantage of a situation where a person, or their loved one is terminally ill. When someone is terminally ill, this is a time of terrible stress when a person would like nothing more than just a little relief from the whole thing. A person would be VERY motivated to find financial solutions or try to resolve their financial situation if they were terminally ill. Somebody in this delicate situation would be probably really susceptible to an outsider trying to help. It's good to get the word out about life insurance scams and viatical settlement scams etc. If you know of a loved one who is terminally ill, you may want to ask them about if they've had any experience with somebody trying to sell them something , or get them to cash in their life insurance policy etc. I'm going to do a little more research on this subject. Life insurance scams for seniors
State securities regulators release an annual list of the top 10 investment scams they are combating. New to the 2001 list are risky payphone and ATM investments, often sold by independent life insurance agents, and so-called "callable" certificates of deposit sold to older Americans despite their 10- to 20-year maturities. Securities fraud costs Americans billions of dollars each year, state securities regulators estimate. While the new list of scams includes repeat offenders, such as broadly marketed promissory notes, bogus prime bank schemes and risky viatical settlements (interests in the life insurance policies of supposedly terminally ill people), the people selling them are moving out of the boiler room and onto Main Street. News and life insurance discussion on www.quality-ins.com

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In previous posts I have been talking about life insurance benefits for the victims of the Katrina Hurricane but as well for anyone else who receives it. Generally when you take out a life insurance policy, you have to designated at least one beneficiary to whom the money will be given should the policy holder die. You can make the life insurance policy beneficiary any other person, but most commonly is designated to children or immediate family. Even though you have to lose a loved one to collect a life insurance policy, I get a sense that some people would get giddy and irrational about receiving $250,000 or $500,000 in cash from a life insurance policy all at once. Here are things you SHOULDN'T spend all of your life insurance benefit money on: ? Gambling at the casino. Poker, Blackjack and slot machines was not what the money was intended for. ? Over expensive cars. Don't buy an expensive Porsche even though you can afford it. ? Gadgets such as DVD's, MP3 players, DV video players, 52" TV's ? High risk and untested business ventures I can just imagine a person with little financial skill or wisdom burning through $250,000 (quarter of a million dollars) easily by gambling and buying trinkets and toys that go down in value. Although the person who died would have wanted you to be happy, they probably would have wanted you to use the money for income replacement and to secure your future financially. They probably would have wanted you to use the money to secure your family's and your heirs' future. WHAT TO DO WITH LIFE INSURANCE MONEY? Depending on your age, financial situation, family situation, there are different ways to use life insurance benefit money that will give you some long lasting value. If you're young and are currently renting, you may want to buy a good quality house. As well if you haven't done so already, you may want to purchase a university or college education. If you're already more established, you may want to pay off your existing mortgage and all of your credit cards and lines of credit. The whole idea is to get yourself in a financially secure position so that you're not constantly worrying about money. HERE'S WHAT I RECOMMEND If you have received or are going to receive a huge amount of money such as a life insurance benefits amount, get out a pad of paper and write down all of the things you would spend money on. Make two lists: 1) The important, boring, unexciting long term list. This is the list that secures your financial future. It buys you a house and college education. It puts some rainy day money away for you. These are the things that will set you up for the rest of your life. 2) The exciting gadget list. These are the DVD player, DV camera digital camera, Big TV and all stuff you've been drooling over. The trips and gambling and all the fun stuff you've been dying to do. Set aside a LITTLE money for these items. It's not good to completely deprive yourself. However make sure that you take care of the fundamentals first. Ultimately you'll be glad that you did some future planning as it will save you many years of financial head ache. If you find yourself the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, please do the responsible thing and spend the money wisely. By Monty Loree - Financial Maturity blog - Topic - Life Insurance Benefit Money. Spend it wisely, don't spend it foolishly.

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