How to get insurance

How to get insurance? you should read this book " The Insurance Maze: How You Can Save Money on Insurance-and Still Get the Coverage You Need " Very Useful Book How to get insurance I hate Insurance. I hate the whole idea of an industry that is built upon fear. But my mortgage lender requires me to insure my house, the Department of Motor Vehicles makes me insure my car, my wife insists that I have a life insurance policy, and it would seem irresponsible not to provide my kids with health insurance as long as I can afford it. If you add it all up, we all spend a lot of money on insurance -- and the question really isn't if you should be buying insurance, but if you are buying the right insurance at the best price. This book will help you answer those questions. Kim Lankford has an insiders perspective on the insurance industry (having begun her career there) and she knows how to write -- she's the authoeor of the a regular "Ask Kim" column in Kiplingers. Lankfrod gives you the inside scoop on your best options for coverage with real-life examples, resources, and tools to find your best deals. Reading this book taught me some valuable lessons about the hidden costs in health insurance plans, and how to make the most of a health savings account that is going to help me build a sizable stash of tax free money. The book is also full on unintuitive insights into life insurance prices, auto insurance pricing, and tricks to minimize potential problems when you make a claim. This book is well worth the money you will spend to buy it and the time you will invest in reading it. The book is a great description of the subject, and it clearly defines insurance customers' options. Very current and spans several types of insurance. After spending years caring for a chronic disease, I thought I knew everything about health insurance, but this actually taught me a few things that can cut my bills. Great glossary and list of internet resources will help keep the reader up-to-date on numbers and trends. Product Description Before You Buy Another Insurance Policy Read this Book!Without proper insurance—health, auto, homeowners, life, disability, or long-term care—an unexpected event can quickly derail your financial plans and put your life savings at risk.Insurance is an essential part of financial planning, but many people are paying hundreds – sometimes thousands -- of dollars more than they need to, and often, they buy the wrong kinds of coverage. With your family's financial future at stake, you can't afford to make the wrong decisions when shopping for insurance.In The Insurance Maze: How You Can Save Money on Insurance—and Still Get the Coverage You Need, industry expert and writer Kimberly Lankford breaks through the clutter and jargon of the industry and helps you make the most of your coverage and avoid expensive mistakes that can jeopardize your financial future. Some of the topics addressed include:•Mistakes people make when choosing employer-provided health plans –and how to find a better deal on your own•Strategies for making the most of health savings accounts•Why it’s dangerous to make small homeowners insurance claims•How to benefit from plummeting life insurance prices•Major pricing changes in auto insurance that could save you hundreds of dollars•Steps you can take to avoid problems at claim time •Why long-term care insurance is essential to protect your retirement savings, and how to minimize rising premiumsAs a journalist writing about insurance for more than a decade, Kim Lankford has been investigating the business from the inside and out – writing about sales strategies for insurance company executives and agents at the beginning of her career, then revealing those strategies to consumers as the chief insurance writer for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine and author of the "Ask Kim" column. Lankford’s inside knowledge of the business has made her one of the best-known insurance writers in the country. About the Author Kimberly Lankford is a contributing editor for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and featured columnist on Kiplinger.com, where she has been helping readers with their financial questions for more than a decade. She is frequently featured as a personal finance expert on radio and television, including NBC’s Today Show, the CBS Early Show, CNN, National Public Radio, and Fox News. Kim is also the author of Rescue Your Financial Life and The Insurance Maze. As newlyweds with a new home, new car, and plans to start a family, we realized that we had to re-examine our insurance needs. After browsing through a bunch of other books on insurance, we found that this really covered everything we needed to know in clear, simple language. We learned some things that really surprised us in every category of insurance and this book really helped us make the right choices for our situation. We anticipate saving quite a bit of money after following the advice in this book, rather than just blindly selecting the insurance policies that we either already had, or that friends/family recommended. Highly recommended as a great overview guide to insurance. How to Collect on Lost Life Insurance Policies A relative has just died. He had a life insurance policy with you listed as the beneficiary. There's just one problem: the life insurance policy is missing. You have no idea which insurance company wrote it. If you find the missing life insurance policy in the future, are you still eligible to receive the death benefit? Hope they paid their insurance bills If you're a beneficiary and you find the lost life insurance policy shortly after the insured dies (within six months to a year, for example), claiming the death benefit should be trouble-free. First, determine if the insured had term or permanent life insurance. If the insured held a term policy, you'll receive the death benefit if he died before the end of the policy term. If he died after the policy expiration date, you would get nothing. If the insured had a permanent life policy, you'll receive the money if the death occurred while the policy was "in force," meaning all premium payments were made up until the time of death. If the death was a while ago, you'll receive the benefit with interest from the date of death. If the life insurance policy lapsed — meaning the insured stopped making premium payments before he died — there's a chance you might get nothing. When a permanent life insurance policy lapses, most insurance companies switch its status from permanent insurance to one of two options: "Extended term" — The insurance company uses the cash value of the policy to buy a term life insurance policy for the same death benefit using the cash value of the policy. The death benefit will continue for the longest period the cash value will purchase. "Reduced paid up" — The insurance company will keep the policy in force permanently, but will reduce the death benefit. Gerry Brogla, an actuary for State Farm, says in the majority of the cases at his company, the permanent policy continues as extended term if it lapses. At State Farm, extended term is the default option for most permanent policies. If the policy lapses, and the extended-term period expires before the insured dies, the policy is worthless and the life insurance beneficiary will get nothing. If the insured dies before the extended-term period is up, the beneficiary will receive the death benefit. If the policy lapsed because the insured died (thus ending premium payments and causing the insurance to be placed in extended-term status), the beneficiary will still collect the full death benefit, regardless of when the extended term was up. The beneficiary always needs to supply the insurance company with a death certificate to verify the date of death. There is no time limit during which a life insurance beneficiary must step forward to collect the money, according to Jack Dolan, spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers. "If a person shows up 30 years after [the insured's] death, the company still makes good on it," Dolan assures. What happens if no one ever reports the death? If the insured dies and the insurance company does not learn of the death, the policy lapses. Insurance companies will take steps to find out why a policyholder stopped making payments. When an insurance company stops getting payments, it sends letters to the insured informing him the policy may lapse as a result of unpaid premiums. If the letters go unanswered, the company might initiate a search to find the insured. If that comes up empty, the company will then lapse the policy. If a beneficiary to a policy never steps forward, it unfortunately means the insured paid money to a policy throughout his life and his beneficiaries never see a penny. This is why its a good idea to make sure beneficiaries are aware of any life insurance policies you have. If you're lucky, the state may have your money In some cases when a beneficiary fails to claim a death benefit for several years, the money is transferred to the state where the insurance policy was purchased under the escheat laws. If a company knows an insured died and it cannot find the beneficiary, it must turn the full death benefit over to the state comptroller's department within three to five years of the insured's death. The money is transferred to the state where the insured bought the policy. The money is considered "unclaimed property" and gets lumped in with dormant bank accounts and uncollected rent deposits. The comptroller's department maintains a database that lists the names and addresses of lost life insurance beneficiaries. Many states will try to contact life insurance beneficiaries in an effort to pay the death benefits. In Texas, for example, the names and addresses of the beneficiaries are published annually in each county in the state. In New York, the Web site of the New York State Comptroller's Office of Unclaimed Funds has an online search to find any unclaimed death benefits owed to you. You can find out the procedures in your state by contacting the office of your state comptroller or treasurer. Keep in mind your chances of finding the policy with the state are slim. The insurance company has no obligation to hand the money over to the state if it's unaware the insured died. In most cases, it's the beneficiary who contacts the insurance company. Also, the insurer only transfers the money to the state three to five years after it cannot find the beneficiary but knows the insured died. If the state doesn't have the death benefit, it's likely the insurer is still looking for the beneficiary or doesn't know the policyholder has died. Unclaimed death benefits are rarely transferred to the state. Dave Potter, a spokesman for Hartford Life, says less than 1 percent of his company's death benefits go unclaimed. Del Chance, a life insurance claims manager at State Farm, says, "Turning over life policy benefits to an individual state after the death of an insured is extremely rare. State Farm utilizes their own search techniques as well as outside vendors to locate lost beneficiaries in the event of the death of one of our insureds. By and large these procedures have always located the beneficiary. Tips for making sure your life insurance beneficiaries get your death benefit: 1. Give your beneficiaries your policy information. It can be a difficult and awkward conversation, but an important one. 2. Keep all your financial records (especially your life insurance policies) in one place. Don't force your beneficiaries to search your house from top to bottom after you die. Tips for looking for lost life insurance policies: 1. Go through canceled checks or contact your relative's bank for copies of old checks. Look for checks made out to insurance companies. 2. Ask those who may have known about your relative's finances. Speak with the relative's lawyer, banker or accountant. Also contact the relative's insurance agent. 3. Contact your relative's past employers. They might know of possible group life insurance. The insured might have also purchased supplemental life insurance through work. 4. Check the mail for a year. Premium bills and policy-status notices are usually sent annually. 5. Look at income tax returns for the past two years. Check for interest income from policies or expenses paid to life insurance companies. 6. Contact the Medical Information Bureau. If your relative bought life insurance fairly recently, there might be a trail of the companies to which he applied. The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) maintains a database that might show if insurers requested your relative's medical information within the past seven years. Record searches can be requested through the MIB's Policy Locator Service and cost $75. The MIB says that nearly 30 percent of searches turn up leads. Visit Insure.com for a comprehensive array of comparative auto, life and health quotes, including a vast library of originally authored insurance articles and decision-making tools that are not available from any other single source. Insure.com is dedicated to providing impartial insurance information to consumers. Visitors can obtain instant quotes from more than 200 leading insurers, achieve maximum savings and have the freedom to buy from any company shown.