Financial planning ought to be a comprehensive process that takes into account planning for all your life’s events. It should cover all these facets, from protecting against risk, to savings for kids’ college and retirement to investment needs for business and long-term growth of finances. A financial plan involves chalking out your financial goals, purposes and priorities in life. Then, you draw up a chart of your risks, resources and expenses made to support your current lifestyle. Then you figure out ways to use and leverage risk against resource, and expense against savings, keeping your final goals in mind all the time.

Start with the obvious: Your short term goal. Maybe you’re looking at a debt that needs to be paid off immediately, or something that needs to be purchased like a car or home and you need to accumulate some savings for a down payment. This loan, car or home will negatively affect your family if you are not around. (Would creditors at your doorstep hound your spouse and kids? Would your family be relegated to moving from one apartment to another without a home to call their own?) Clearly, these are important goals that need to be sorted, whether you’re alive or not. Perhaps you have a long term financial goal. You want to make sure that no matter what, your kids are going to college. You may want to leave behind a trust fund for your favorite charity or not-for-profit. You may want to make sure that no matter what, your retirement years will be taken care of without assistance from friends or family. Or you may want to leave the country and settle somewhere else, and spend your retirement years exploring new places and doing new things.

Assess what you have: Now that you have your goals set in sight, take a look at what you have with you. How much savings do you already have? What would you need to do in order to reach these goals? Sometimes, this can seem like a daunting task, especially if you haven’t any savings so far. Don’t worry! You’ve taken the first step to plan and organize your finances and that in itself is a good thing. Many people  don’t even know how essential a financial plan can be to sorting out their problems, and make the same mistakes over and over again.

Spending versus Savings: Get on a plan that will help you save towards these goals by taking into account what you already have. There are several great programs out there that can help to bring you on the right track. We won’t make suggestions here, but a simple search through the local library or even a search engine can get you started. In fact, the spending versus savings equation is not complicated if your needs are not too big. Exercising enough prudence, you will be able to chart your own savings plan that works for you.

How to take care of risks: The number one solution to risk management is insurance. So when you’re buying a new home, a better car or planning for a future where your kids and spouse can be taken care of, insurance will take care of it all.

If you have a large enough life insurance policy, it can step in and fill in the gaps in case you “step out”. Because life can be unpredictable, life insurance is a great way to build risk contingency plans in place. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all policy and therefore life insurance decisions need to be taken carefully and are dependent on your age, the number of dependents you have and your personal economic situation. One type of life insurance is not better than the other. You need to choose the type of life insurance that best suits your situation depending on your personal and financial circumstances. You can consult a life insurance adviser or use many of the online life insurance providers for advice on the best life insurance policy that would suit your personal situation.

Get online life insurance quotes to compare insurance plans. You may find a policy that comfortably covers the risks involved in your future plans for less than $40 a month, especially if you choose term life insurance. And if you choose whole life, it could form a part of your long term savings structure. Good luck on your path to financial security! We hope you achieve everything you set out to do.

Why You Should Consider Long Term Care Insurance

This year, like every other year, is going to be a time of great change all around us. The Congress may have bestowed an extra life to coffers in state and federal governments around the country with an extension of deadlines so as to not reach a fiscal cliffs, but the truth of the matter remains. Our country is facing a real time threat to funds, resources and budgets and we can no more rest on guarantees that they will be around to protect us by the time we retire from our service years. We ought to be making wise choices that will stand us in good stead in the coming years, and take responsibility for our own futures.

Especially if you already have the means to. So what’s a good way to start doing that? By considering long term care insurance, it’s advantages and what it would cost you to take care of your own health in the future on your terms.

So what is long terms care? Long term care is a large number of services in healthcare and related fields given to people with chronic illnesses or disabilities. It also includes care-giving activities like taking care of daily routines (bathing, eating, changing clothes, using the bathroom) if a person needs it. Long term care is given when the illness or condition persists over several years. According to research estimates, primary (and unofficial) caregivers in long term care usually tend to be family members and loved ones, who are not paid for what they do. Caregiving as a family member is oftentimes expected, especially in the case of families that are strapped for cash and do not have adequate insurance protection for long term care needs. But research has also proven that this kind of caregiving can be taxing on all, especially the caregivers and their immediate other dependants as well. If you have the opportunity to put affordable insurance in place early on while you can, you owe it to yourself and your kids to take care of things sooner rather than later.

Some people like thinking that they won’t be around for too long, and therefore won’t need long term care. That is not the case for most people; research has again proven that life expectancy has increased significantly and people are living longer these days. With this information, it won’t be safe anymore to assume that you won’t need some form of long term care. And long term care is not just needed when you’re old and n your retirement years. Families with a history of chronic illnesses or conditions that have early onsets should watch out for signs and symptoms and buy umbrella long term coverage for their entire families to protect young children as well.

When people argue against the case for long term care, they often say that it’s a waste of time because long term care never ends up being used.

According to this US News article ,

long term care insurance providers have changed their offering to include the customer’s best interests a little more. Read an excerpt from the article that describes the new products below:

• Shared care products that allow a married couple to take out separate plans that are connected. “If the first person passes away without using it, the benefit transfers to the spouse,” Newman says.
• Hybrid products that are a life insurance policy that has a rider for long-term care insurance. Only a handful of companies offer it now, and it is being perfected, Udell says. But the hybrid provides a way to set up a pot of assets that can be used for long-term care. And if it is never needed for that, the family will receive a life insurance benefit.
• Long-term care partnership programs, which are offered in about 40 states. The advantage: Americans who have a state-approved, private long-term care insurance policy will be able to hold onto more of their assets if they later need to apply for Medicaid.”

So if you’re looking to make your own way out, create your own safety net and rely on your own means in your retirement years, seriously consider a long term care insurance policy. Look also at how much you can afford in monthly payments. You can shop for* long term care insurance* on an aggregator website to help save some money. And don’t forget that your whole *life insurance policy* can also allow the addition of an LTCinsurance rider. Ask your carrier about adding an LTC insurance rider on your whole life policy, which will allow you to use the cash value to pay for LTC costs instead of using it for death benefit.

Life Settlement Transaction May be Offered if a Person is Over The Age of 60

A life settlement company purchases or buys an outside party’s life insurance policy that they no longer need, want, or can financially afford. Life settlement policies are defined as requests, sales, transfers or other assignments of an insurance policy to another outside source or party. For life settlements, the terms are legally understood or the policy has an insurance prerequisite that a selling policy holder/owner be healthy at the time of the sale. The owner can may not be diseased or have any other fatal medical conditions.

In this day and time, there are a variety of reasons that a life insurance policy owner may consider selling their life insurance policy and they may include:

• The insurance owner of the acquired policy may not want their policy any longer;
• The insurance policy owner may not need their policy anymore;
• The insurance policy holder/owner may wish to purchase another type of life insurance policy;
• The insurance premiums may no longer be in the insurance owner’s budget or the premium payments just may not be financially affordable for them now

A policy holder may have learned this financial information about settling their life insurance policies from a friend or family member, an estate planning presentation, an attorney, an insurance broker, or their financial advisor or planner.

Key individuals, judicial rulings, and numerous other events were some of the main topics that started the initial life settlement market.

Life insurance policies were considered private property of the individual policy owner by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the U.S. Supreme Court. This court ruling was handed down in 1911 in the case of Grigsby v. Russell, 222 U.S. 149.

Justice Holmes remarked in his legal opinion that a policy of life insurance may be transferred at the discretion of its owner or holder to any person that they chose to have or leave it to unless restrictions were implemented by the insurance carrier.

Life insurance policies can be transferable property if the person includes specific legal rights that include:

• The beneficiary name located in the insurance policy itself;
• The policy holder may change the designation of the beneficiary, unless the insurance company puts restrictions in the policy;
• The owner of the policy may assign the policy for loan collateral;
• The policy owner may borrow against the insurance policy;
• The policy owner may sell the insurance policy to another party

A life settlement transaction may resemble a viatical settlement but the life settlement’s policy holder cannot have any fatal diseases of any sort during the sell to the buyer.

Life settlement transaction may be through several entities. Some examples may include:

• Providers;
• Brokers;
• Investors

So if an individual has a life insurance policy that they no longer want, need or desire to have for any reason, perhaps a life settlement transaction may be good for both of the parties.