The Debt Movement: Taking Down $10 Million of Debt in 90 Days, Together

It all started to sink in when I was in college.

My dad kept telling me how he was having his house reappraised.

At first I didn’t get it.

And then it finally clicked.

The reason for his reappraisals was so that his home could be valued more and he then could borrow more against it.

The realization left me lost for words and understanding.

What I did know.

I knew my dad had struggled with debt.

He already had filed bankruptcy once, but somehow managed to get approved for more credit cards. He was always buying new gadgets for his computer and other things he didn’t really need.

You would think that filing bankruptcy you would learn your lesson, but unfortunately that was not the case.

He managed to rack up even more credit card debt after his bankruptcy.

One vivid memory is the white sheet of paper sitting on his computer desk that listed all of his credit card debts with the current interest rate and the next minimum payment amount.

He was constantly juggling trying to figure out how he could borrow money from one credit card to make the minimum payment on the next.

He tried to lead on that it didn’t stress him out, but I knew better.

I could see it in his face and hear it in his voice: His debt was killing him.

I would like to think that my dad wanted something different.

That he didn’t want to be in debt.

For whatever reason, he could never figure a way out.

Like father like son.

In college, I started down that same path. I took out student loans when I didn’t have to since the National Guard paid for my tuition and most of my fees.

A friend of mine showed me how easy it was to apply for a student loan. It was like getting free money at a vending machine. I filled out the form, turned it in, and poof, a few weeks later I had a check for $2,700 in my mailbox.

On top of that, I opened a few different credit cards and found it super-convenient to swipe them whenever I was getting ready to make my next purchase. I had even co-signed a credit card with my girlfriend at the time, forcing some of my bad behavior on her.

After a few years of kidding myself that I wasn’t becoming what my father had become, I finally woke up. Thanks to a change in mindset and a small inheritance from my grandmother, I was able to make a full commitment to get and stay out of debt for good.

The lucky one.

Reflecting back, I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. My father passed away in debt.

So many others struggle with the exact same issue and need help.

That’s why I’m starting the Debt Movement™.

I’ve partnered with ReadyForZero and the financial blogging community to help people pay off $10,000,000 of debt in 90 days.

In case that didn’t sink in, let me repeat myself: We are going to help people pay off $10 million of debt in 90 days.

Six Retirement Risks—and a Plan for Dealing With Them

Caleb J. Callahan, CFP, recently spoke at an industry meeting. He discussed the need for planning both before and after retirement takes place, specifically distribution planning. I wanted to share his wisdom with you.

He advises that you should build a customized Retirement Income Survival Kit or RISK. This is a retirement income blueprint that optimizes the use of your retirement resources while minimizing the risk of outliving them. A RISK provides specific advice about how to invest your assets to meet specific income goals while protecting against six key risks you will face in retirement.

Once you retire and begin to tap your retirement income, you will invariably face a number of these risks:

1. Market risk – losing your savings
2. Longevity risk – outliving your assets
3. Inflation risk – uncertainty of changing inflation in areas of spending
4. Liquidity risk – flexibility to access cash
5. Health risk – health care expenses
6. Legacy risk – ability to pass on assets at death

Once you understand these risks that you will face during retirement, you should rank them in order of importance. After that, you need to answer “yes” or “no” as to whether your current investment portfolio adequately addresses each of these risks. This will help you focus on a key consideration: What do I need to do to address these risks and make sure I can achieve my goals?

The next step is best taken with the help of your advisor (or if you don’t have one, you cansearch for one here). He or she can help you better understand the risks and engineer an income plan. That means constructing a retirement income allocation model, which will be the basis for your retirement income blueprint.

According to Callahan, an income allocation model must include everything in a traditional asset allocation plan, but it takes a step back to more effectively address the six key risks. For example, an income allocation model not only includes the traditional asset management diversification, it must also include diversification among equity income guarantees, longevity insurance, inflation protection, long-term care coverage and death benefits.

There is no single product that addresses the six key risks of retirement, so the idea is to diversify among different products, including the risk based products, during the retirement years, to effectively address them all.

Again, your advisor is key during all of this. It’s their job to help you understand the different components and products that will make up your plan.

The final step is execution. It’s important to have a plan that you can truly understand and follow. A nice but complex plan that sits in a drawer untouched doesn’t do you any good. We are entering the age of personal responsibility for our own financial well-being. This is a good blueprint to help you begin to do that.

It Can Happen to You

Friday, August 3rd, 2012 | Jeff Rose | Comments (1) | 

  

It’s one of those things that you think will never happen to you.

To walk into the kitchen and find the love of your life lying lifeless on the floor; dead on the cold kitchen tile.

It’s been over three years since I heard this story. A fresh widow sitting in my office clenching the box of tissues that I offered her, sharing her sad story with me.

She had been married to her husband for more than 20 years. They had two wonderful kids and loved spending each day with each other.

The Family Man

The husband was a hard worker. He loved his family and gave each day his all. He had no preexisting conditions. As a doctor himself, he was very conscious of his health and took care of himself.

Stories like this happen more often than we want to believe. You see it in the news, you see it in blogs, you even hear about it on Oprah.

Some of us are lucky. We never have to experience the heartache of losing a loved one before it was time for them to go. I can only imagine how hard it is for someone to go through that. And there is no hiding the pain that I saw in her eyes. But as I mentioned, the husband loved his wife and loved his family and made sure that they were protected.

He did this by taking out a very large life insurance policy.

Having to deal with the pain of losing her husband was hard enough. If she would have had to worry about where her next paycheck was going to come from now that her husband, who was the clear breadwinner of the two, was gone, I think it would have broken her. Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry.

She didn’t have to worry at all.

The husband had realized how inexpensive term life insurance was and bought a lot of it. With the amount of life insurance that her husband had thoughtfully taken out on himself, she and the kids were set.

She wouldn’t have to work again.

Her kids could continue to go to the colleges that they wanted. The family, even without their dad and husband, would be okay financially.

It’s been three years since that unfortunate day, and having a review meeting with that client, she reinforced how thankful she was that her husband had had the foresight to buy the life insurance. She sat in my office and said, “Had he not bought that [life insurance], I have no idea what I would have done.”

So many people don’t feel the need to buy life insurance. In fact, over one-third of the U.S. population has no life insurance in their households whatsoever.

Life insurance is cheap. Life insurance is easy; it literally takes you less than 10 minutes to get a quote. I know because I did it myself. And if you haven’t, you need to.

Don’t you want to leave your loved ones with the financial means to continue without worry if you should leave them before you expect to go?

What are you waiting for?

This is a guest post by Jeff Rose, a Certified Financial Planner and Iraqi combat veteran. He blogs at Good Financial Cents, Soldier of Finance and Life Insurance By Jeff.

Jeff is orchestrating the Life Insurance Movement on Wednesday, August 22 to bring more awareness about the need of purchasing an adequate of amount of life insurance to protect your family. He’s looking to recruit bloggers to write about their own personal stories of why life insurance is important to them (you can contact him directly at jeff at goodfinancialcents.com) and also asking consumers to spread the word via social media. There will be giveaways, so mark your calendars and stay tuned!

Customize Your Life Insurance With Riders

A rider is basically a provision that you can add to a life insurance policy that helps you customize it to make it best fit your needs. The rider provides additional benefits that the basic policy does not. Some you need to pay for, some are included at no cost.

Let’s cover the riders that are typically included with term life insurance policies without additional costs:

Accelerated death benefit rider: Life insurance is meant to provide a sum of money to your loved ones in the event of your death. But what happens if you become terminally ill, and it’s you who needs money for medical bills, or other expenses, especially if you can’t work? This rider, which is typically included in term life policies, allows you to access a portion of your death benefit if you become terminally ill. For example, if a physician determines you have less than 12 months to live, you may be able to access up to 75% of the death benefit, up to a certain maximum. But keep in mind that every company’s guidelines are a bit different.

Term conversion option: With this rider, you have the right to convert your term policy to a permanent life insurance policy within a specific time period. Each life insurance company has different rules regarding when you are eligible to convert, but having a term conversion option is advantageous because you can convert the term policy without a new medical exam and your rate is determined based on the health rating you got when you purchased the term life policy. That means that if you have a term policy and your health deteriorates, you may want to convert the policy so that it doesn’t expire and leave you with limited options for getting new coverage.

There are other riders that you can add to customize your policy, but that come at an addition cost. These include:

Child insurance benefit rider: This allows you to add life insurance for your child. Typically children between 15 days and 18 years old are eligible to be added to your policy, and coverage on your child expires between ages 21-25, depending on the life insurance company you choose. This rider typically allows anywhere between $1,000 to around $25,000 of coverage per child. Although no parent wants to go through losing and burying a child, coverage is inexpensive. So if you have young children and not much in savings to cover those costs, this rider can help with final expenses, should the unexpected happen.

Accidental death benefit rider: When you purchase a traditional life insurance policy, the death benefit covers you for “any cause.” This means that whether you die from natural causes, disease, accident or injury, you’re covered, and your beneficiaries are eligible to receive a death benefit. An accidental death benefit rider allows you to increase the death benefit on your policy in case you die as a result of an accident or injury (typically you must die within 90 days of the accident or injury to qualify). You can generally double your coverage in case of accident with this rider, up to an additional $250,000-$500,000 depending on the life insurance company.

Waiver of premium rider: This would protect you in case you got disabled. If you have this rider, the life insurance company would continue to pay your policy premiums for you as long as you are disabled. This is a rider that you need to qualify for, which would depend on your health and occupation. My recommendation is that if you buy a policy that is inexpensive and you know you will be able to afford the premium under any circumstance, you don’t need to pay an additional fee for this rider. However if you are buying a more substantial policy that has a premium that you will only be able to afford if you are earning the income you are used to, you may want to consider this option.

Return of premium rider: The most “expensive” term life insurance rider is the return of premium rider. With this rider, if you outlive the term of your policy, you get back all the premiums you paid. For example, if you buy a 20-year term life policy and you live past the 20 years, you will get back all premiums paid. While this sounds great, having this rider will significantly increase the cost of your term policy, and if you are a savvy investor, you may be able to get a better return on your investment doing it yourself.

Let’s take a look at an example. If a 40-year-old buys a $250,000 20-year term policy with return of premium, the policy would cost $884 per year. At the end of 20 years you would get back $17,680. Without the return of premium rider, the same policy would cost $300 per year, which means you are paying an additional $584 per year for this rider. If you invested the $584 each year, at a rate of 4% per year over 20 years, you would net $17,390—about the same as the return of premium on the life insurance policy. Any return over 4% and you would end up getting a better return investing the money on your own, as opposed to buying the rider. The bottom line is that if you find that you aren’t disciplined enough or knowledgeable enough to invest the money on your own, this rider could be beneficial, otherwise I’d recommend saving the money on your own as you could probably get a better return on your own.

What Do They Cost?

Now let’s discuss what these riders cost. We’ll use our 40-year-old male applying for a 20-year $250,000 term life insurance policy (at preferred plus non-tobacco rates). Keep in mind, these numbers are a guide. The annual cost of the main term policy would be about $200 per year. A $10,000 child rider would cost an additional $50 a year. A waiver of premium rider would cost less than $30 a year. An accidental death benefit rider would cost between about $150-$250 a year, depending on the life insurance company you choose.

Milk, Laundry Detergent and Life Insurance?

When you walk through the aisles of Wal-Mart, you can quickly fill up a shopping cart with essentials like laundry detergent, socks, peanut butter, light bulbs and life insurance. Yes, life insurance.

Beginning late last year, MetLife started offering prepaid life insurance policies at 200 Wal-Mart stores in Georgia and South Carolina, as part of a pilot program.

Numbers may bear the company out. Nearly one in five consumers (17%) say they would be willing to purchase life insurance coverage directly from a retail outlet, according to just-released findings from the 2013 Insurance Barometer Study, conducted by the LIFE Foundation and LIMRA. The reasons they give make sense: The majority of those who said they would consider buying life insurance at a big-box retailer cite reasonable cost (63%), while advantages like a simple buying process (44%) and convenience (43%) also ranked highly.

The truth is that while many people say they would drop a life insurance policy in their cart while shopping, it’s a novel concept that hasn’t been tested. The Barometer study showed that most people still prefer to buy face-to-face—to ask an agent questions, to understand the nuances of the product, to get a life insurance plan tailored to their exact needs.

That said, we also know that a lot of people procrastinate getting life insurance. The study showed that while the vast majority of consumers (85%) agree that most people need life insurance and 65% say they personally need it, just 62% indicated that they have life insurance coverage. Some view the road to life insurance ownership as a complicated process. But what if that first step into life insurance ownership for these procrastinators could happen at the same time they were buying milk?

People often joke that they walk into a store like Target for some window cleaner and walk out an hour later having spent $300 on a cart full of things they didn’t know they needed. What if in one of those bags, along with shampoo and diapers, there was financial protection for your family? An interesting thought.

Let us know what you think. Would you buy your life insurance from a big-box store—and why?

5 Financial Tips for Moms

Only 24% of moms are satisfied with their current financial situation and one-quarter admitted they are struggling to make ends meet or are worried about their financial future. However, only one-third of moms currently use the services of a financial professional to help them with their investments and/or insurance needs.

These are some startling stats from the moms who were surveyed for “State of the American Mom Study” released by MassMutual and conducted by Forbes Consulting Group, LLC. The study was comprised of 1,014 interviews with American women who are financially responsible for children under the age of 27. Interviews were conducted among mothers aged 25-65 with household incomes greater than $50,000 who contributed at least 40% to decisions regarding financial matters in their household.

When it comes to insurance, the data shows that moms may be putting their families in a vulnerable position: 46% of moms surveyed do not own disability income insurance and an even larger number (68%) do not own long-term care insurance—both key to help ensure financial stability for the long term.

The following are a few key tips from MassMutual to help moms get their finances on track:

1. Be prepared. Emergencies aren’t predictable. Set up an emergency account now to help protect yourself and avoid finding yourself in a troubling financial situation.
2. Protect your income. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you provide valuable services to your family that may trigger out-of-pocket expenses should something ever happen to you. With the help of a financial professional, you can explore available options to ensure that you’re planning ahead, no matter what the future holds.
3. Guard your independence. Long-term care insurance is one option that allows you to have a plan in place to help protect your assets and remain as independent as possible, if you require the need for long-term care.
4. Plan now (not later). Don’t procrastinate when it comes to planning for your financial future. No one knows what the future brings, so now is the time to sit down and think about how to pass your assets – but not your taxes – to your heirs.
5. Have the talk. Schedule monthly meetings to sit down with your spouse or significant other to discuss your finances. It’s critical for both people to have a full understanding of all debt and assets in order to build a realistic plan.

These are excellent suggestions from Mass Mutual, but an even better one is to sit down with a financial professional or agent to review your current situation, determine the problem areas and put together a plan of action with appropriate solutions. A good place to start for a young family is with the LIFE Foundation’s educational resources here.

Woops: Don’t Let Your Life Insurance Policy Lapse

Everyone knows that sinking feeling when you realize that you forgot to take care of an important item. It could be something as minor as forgetting to set the DVR for your favorite reality TV show. Or it could be something major such as leaving the house with a pot of boiling water on the stove. Like a swift punch to the gut, the sense of panic hits you like no other. I felt this same panic-stricken feeling when I realized I had let my life insurance policy lapse.

Like most young and growing families, mylife insurance needs changed through the years. When I first got married, I purchased a $250,000 term policy to take care of my lovely, new wife in the event something happened to me. After having our first child, a new surge of responsibility hit, and I felt the need to take out an additional $500,000 term policy.

A few years and a second child later, $750,000 of life insurance didn’t seem like enough, so I took out an additional $1.5 million term policy. All three policies were with three separate carriers, which made keeping track of when the premiums were due a bit of a hassle.

Since we liked to pay for the insurance premiums on an annual basis, we waited until we got the premium bill in the mail before we mailed off a check to the life insurance company. For a few years, this went off without a hitch, until that day that I had a seemingly innocent conversation with my wife.

Uh oh….

Two of the smaller policies had premium dates that were fairly close together. With the $250,000 premium coming due, I considered dropping it and just keeping the larger two policies. I made a comment to my wife, who typically handles all the bills in our household, to go ahead and let the smaller policy lapse. Being a horrible delegator, I did a poor job of explaining to her which company was which, so instead of letting the $250,000 term policy lapse, she mistakenly let the $500,000 policy lapse.

Woops …

To make matters worse, I didn’t catch the mistake until several months after the premium date was due. Remember that panicked, sickening feeling I referred to? This is when it hit, and oh boy, did it hit hard. My mind started racing on what I’d have to do to get the policy reinstated. I knew that I was still young and in very good health, so worst case scenario was locking in another affordable life insurance policy shouldn’t be that big a deal. But knowing that the underwriting process could take sometimes four to six weeks, it’s something that I wasn’t crazy about going through again, not to mention the fact I’m not a big fan of being poked by needles.

Getting on the phone

At the first available opportunity, I got on the phone and called the insurance company, preparing myself for the worst. After getting the customer service representative on the phone, I realized it wasn’t as bad as I initially had predicted. I learned that most insurance companies allow what’s called a “grace period.” This grace period is a time, approximately 30 to 31 days after the premium was due that allowed you to send in the premium payments and your life insurance policy would continue with no interruptions.

Apparently, I’m not the only one that misses their life insurance payment, thank goodness. As I mentioned, I was far past the forgivable grace period, so in the life insurance world my policy had officially lapsed. The customer service representative informed me that all I had to do was request a form called the Application for Reinstatement.

Once I completed that form and mailed in the check for the entire annual premium the policy would be reinstated. She did inform me that if I had any health conditions that had occurred after the policy had lapsed I would have to indicate that on that form. As you can see, for someone that has some type of pre-existing high-risk condition, this could be fatal.

How to avoid this

I was one of the lucky ones that wasn’t hurt by letting my policy lapse, but I definitely don’t want that to happen again. Instead of manually sending a check in for our life insurance premiums, we have now have it on auto-draft. That way we never have to experience it again!

The Real Cost of Being Uninsured

Life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance—if you are like most people, when your insurance agent starts talking about coverage you ought to consider, all you can think about is what it’s going to cost you.

And even though it may seem like the economy is getting better, many people are still struggling with the impact the recession has had on their budget and what expenses they can put off until tomorrow.

According to the 2013 Insurance Barometer Study, conducted by LIFE and LIMRA, the majority of consumers are concerned about having enough money for a comfortable retirement, with paying for long-term care and medical expenses next in line in terms of worries—all legitimate issues.

At the same time, it can be challenging to find the money to insure against a possible future event such as a major illness or debilitating accident when you’re facing real expenses or dealing with an insufficient income right now. In situations like that, it can be tempting to metaphorically cross your fingers and hope for the best, putting insurance on the “deal with it later” list. But before you choose that option, you need to know the real cost of being uninsured.

Life Insurance
Imagine that you were to die today. Would your family be able to pay your final expenses and continue to meet ongoing living expenses without your income? Or, if you are a stay-at-home parent, would your partner be able to afford to pay someone to perform all the duties and responsibilities you handled? What about long-term plans—will your children be able to attend college or your spouse retire as planned? With adequate life insurance, your family will be provided for when you are no longer there.

And, depending on the type of policy you choose and the option added to the plan, your insurance can be increasing in value or even, in the case of a terminal illness, provide funds to pay bills even before you die, relieving you and your family of at least one major worry.

Worried about the cost of insurance? While the vast majority of underinsured middle-income consumers include cost as one of the reasons for not purchasing life insurance, even when they believe they need it, the reality is that most people grossly overestimate how much a policy premium would be. For example, a 20-year, $250,000 level-term life policy for a healthy 30-year-old has an actual yearly premium cost of $150. Those surveyed estimated the same coverage at $350 to $500.

Disability Insurance
You don’t need disability insurance, you think. After all, isn’t that what Worker’s Compensation is for? Yes — and no. If the injury occurs on the job, then Worker’s Comp does come into play. However, only 5% of disability claims are work-related—and, according to the Council for Disability Awareness, approximately 90% of disabilities are caused by illnesses rather than accidents.

For example, if you are diagnosed with cancer or sustain major injuries in an auto accident and are unable to work, what will be the source of your income? How will you cover your living expenses and the additional cost of medical care? In this scenario, half of working Americans couldn’t make it one month before experiencing financial difficulties and nearly one fourth wouldn’t make it a week, according to a LIFE study. With disability insurance, however, you would have a source of replacement income to cover costs until you’re able to return to work. Fortunately, there are several options for getting disability insurance coverage. Click here to learn more.

Long-Term Care Insurance
We’d like to think that we will be able to live life on our own terms until it’s time to go, but the reality is that two-thirds of people will actually need some type of long-term care, either in their homes or at a facility. Where will the money come from if you fall into that majority? From Medicare or your existing health insurance? Not likely, since health insurance only pays for doctor and hospital bills, Medicare covers only short-term skilled nursing home care, and Medicaid only comes into play if your assets are very limited.
Will your savings be able to cover the expense? A home health aide three days a week will cost more than $20,000 a year and full-time nursing home care can be over $78,000 annually.

Maybe you think long-term care is something only the elderly have to worry about. But anyone at any age can suffer from an accident or debilitating injury that requires long-term care. As a matter of fact, 40 percent of patients receiving long-term care are under age 65.

For a comprehensive look at what long-term care insurance is click here, and then contact an agent who specializes in long-term care insurance.

The Bottom Line
There are a lot of factors to weigh when purchasing insurance, but be certain to have all the facts before making a decision. As you can see, both buying insurance and not buying insurance comes at a price. Be sure you know what the cost is—short-term and long-term.