What is the right age to buy term insurance?

Senior citizens are generally acknowledged to lead settled lives with little worry. But the real picture can be quite worrying.

One’s retirement years can be a time of great emotional fulfilment. By the time one retires from active working life, he or she has grown up children with careers, sufficient savings in the bank and freedom from financial worries. There is also enough time to pursue all the hobbies and ambitions that one could not due to familial obligations.

But not all senior citizens have a quiet, fulfilled retirement. Many of them are unable to amass enough savings in the bank, some of them have unpaid debts when they retire, and many more are still obliged to contribute to household expenses. For some seniors, it seems like there is never any retirement – they seem to keep working till the time they pass away.

This happens due to lack of awareness about different financial options available and how to capitalise on them. In this connection, it is pertinent to note the important role of term insurance plans.

Why term insurance for seniors?

The biggest worry unsettling several senior citizens is ‘How will my spouse survive after I am gone?’ The retirement years also bring their fair share of health problems, which are expensive to treat. The lack of regular income can spell doom in many households when a person retires at 60 years of age.

In this situation, a term insurance plan can efface the worry of future financial dependence. In the unfortunate event of the senior citizen’s demise, and if the senior citizen is the policy holder, his or her spouse can use the insurance corpus to employ domestic help, pay for medication and treatment, maintain the house and run the daily household expenses. Most importantly, term plans obliterate dependence on children and relatives for daily sustenance.

Seniors must be encouraged to take online term insurance. Taking the plan online results in lower premiums. However, it is important to select a plan when one is still at least in his or her mid-40s, and the plan must cover the policy holder’s entire lifetime. When taking the plan, the policy holder must explain to the nominee about filing for insurance when the need to do so arrives.

In fact, the younger a person is when taking an online term insurance plan, the lower the premium payment will be. It is not wise to think about retirement when it is looming on the horizon. It is far more prudent to plan for it and invest in an online term policy at least 20 years in advance of retirement.