Buying Term Life Insurance

Written by Nickel - 3 Comments

As I mentioned the other day, my wife and I have been shopping for new term life insurance policies. While we currently have policies in place, our family status has changed since we bought those policies (two more kids!), and we’ve decided that we’re now underinsured. Well, as of tonight, we’re one step closer to having our new policies.

After a good bit of poking around, we decided to go through IntelliQuote.com, and we opted for policies from Lincoln National Life. I’m getting a $500k, 20 year term policy for $285/year (the available policies went as high as $505/year) and my wife is getting a $300k, 20 year term policy for $164/year. Beyond offering the best prices, Lincoln also has very strong ratings from S&P, A.M. Best, and Moody’s.

So what’s next? We’ve been told to expect application packets in the mail, and a paramedical examiner will be contacting us within the next five days to set up a brief medical exam. Based on prior experience, this typically entails a medical questionnaire, height, weight, blood pressure, urine sample and blood sample. All in all, it should take less than thirty minutes, and they come to you (home or office). The examiner then takes your completed application and forwards it with the results of the medical test to the insurer for underwriting. According to IntelliQuote, the entire process will likely take six to eight weeks.

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Published on August 31st, 2005 - 3 Comments
Filed under: Insurance
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About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

Comments (scroll down to add your own):

Yep, that’s the standard process. I’ve been through it a few times.

I got a 20-year policy, then two years later prices dropped so I switched to a new one. Be sure you price check every once in awhile as the same may happen for you.
Comment by FMF — Aug 31st 2005 @ 7:36 am
Great post on the process of getting life insurance.
Linked this post in a life insurance posting on my blog today.

The IntelliQuote.com link is great.
Comment by Jose Anes — Aug 31st 2005 @ 12:39 pm
Instead of paying for this insurance with ‘after tax’ dollars, how would you react to the notion of being able to include the premiums on a ‘before tax’ basis in your Roth IRA?
Comment by bob zimmerman — Sep 10th 2005 @ 12:01 pm