Over 50 and Prepared

Are you over 50 and prepared with legal documents to address your end-of-life wishes? If not, there’s no time like the present to get your affairs in order so that arrangements can be settled long (long!) in advance of your passing.

How to Prepare

The first step to preparation is to secure life insurance. Even if you’re in excellent health, you may encounter some difficulty in obtaining life insurance after you hit the Big-Five-Oh. Luckily, several life assurance companies offer programs specifically tailored for adults who have passed that milestone, which welcome all such applicants without regard to their state of health. The guaranteed approval makes it easy to snap up a policy, and the low monthly premium rates which are part and parcel of these programs makes it easy to maintain the policies, even for folks on fixed incomes.

The few caveats you do need to pay attention to include payments and the window of cover provided by the policy. The payments are quite low; that’s not the tricky part. The challenge is to make sure you never, ever miss a premium payment. If just one payment fails to make it through in a timely manner, the insurance company can drop your policy like a hot potato. While inconvenient, this wouldn’t make that huge of a difference to policyholders who have only contributed to the fund for a very few months. Although, if your policy was cancelled due to non-payment, chances that you will be allowed to set up a new policy with the same company are remote.

The painful circumstance would be if you had paid into the account for decades, and then missed a single payment. Not only would you lose your cover, but you would lose the entire amount of premiums you had contributed to the fund over that long stretch of time. The moral of the story here is to set up automatic payments through your bank, so that you won’t run the risk of forgetting to send in a check. Many insurance companies require automatic transfer payments, and it wouldn’t be surprising if more companies jumped on the autopay requirement.

The window of cover is another point of focus that requires attention. Life cover for people 50 years of age and older approve any applicant who falls within a specific age range; such as 50 to 75 years old--that’s the application range. But you also need to look at the cover effective range; that is, whether there is a designated age at which cover is terminated. Taking a risk with a policy that drops cover at the age of, say, 69 is a decision that each person must make individually. If all other factors are similar, and the price points are about the same, you’re definitely better off going with a company that offers the oldest age possible for cover termination; or, better yet, go with a company that extends coverage until the end of your days. Those policies might be harder to find, but they do exist; Sun Life Direct is one of them.

Where There’s a Will..

Surely, you prefer to be in charge of making your own decisions in life. Don’t let a little thing like death wrest that control from you. Take the time to set up a will, now, while you can.

This legal document is not reserved solely for the well-heeled crowd; it’s an instruction document that directs where all your personal and real belongings should go once you no longer have need of them. Put this task off long enough, and the government will make such decisions on your behalf. Know that they won’t be required to listen to what your dearest friend swears is how you wanted things carried out, and expect that your estate will probably be entirely surrendered to the state.

Don’t let this happen to everything you’ve worked so hard for. If you have a simple holdings, and no kids, you can pop online right here and have the paperwork completed in a matter of ten minutes flat. So, no excuses. If your estate is more complicated, make an appointment (this week!) with a professional to draw up a will and be done with it.

Preparation Demonstrates Responsibility

If you’re over 50 and prepared with your final arrangements, it doesn’t mean you believe yourself to be one foot in the grave. It demonstrates that you are a caring individual who has thought and acted ahead, responsibly.

Sam Jones the author recommends the uSwitch, personal finance advice and guides pages when looking for life insurance over 50.