Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyEvel
READ YOUR POLICY
This is where I decided not to do it.
The way it was neatly laid out in columns of numbers by the salesman I thought, "Oh, I will have all this cash to draw from in my later years, and still have $500,000 to leave my kids when I die, because the thing is paying for itself at this point"
NOPE
THE CASH VALUE IS THE CASH VALUE OF THE DEATH BENEFIT. Meaning, once you start to draw on the cash value (say you want to pull $40K a year out to supplement your retirement or $20K each year to go on a two-month trip.) that amount is deducted from your death benefit.
Once you pull a bit from your cash value, not only does the death benefit go down, the dividends go down and you have to start paying the premiums again, as the dividends are no longer enough to cover the payments.
That was never explicitly explained to me by the guy and I tried to remain as polite as possible (it was hard) when I told him we weren't going with any of his recommendations.
PLUS, the proposed policy had a $450,000 Long Term care rider, meaning if one of us needed long term care, we could get $9000 a month for that for up to 50 months. Again, I asked questions ,ran some scenarios by him and he told me that the Long term care money would be withdrawn from the death benefit as well!
So, it felt like additional coverage when in fact it was sold like the but really just re-naming activating the cash withdrawal or depletion of the death benefit.
After this was all clear to me, and I was rejecting him he started to say "well nothing is for free, these companies can't stay in business by giving you $950K for a $250 K investment."
Amnorix, you have a death benefit now, and your assertion may be right that if you had chosen term and invested the rest you might be better off, but you have no idea what you would have put that into. Or if you would have forced yourself to invest that much all those years.
Be happy that you have a death benefit and lump sum to pull from but you don't have both -- at least my policy didn't. Check yours. I wouldn't want you to think you have both and come find out years from now what I learned asking all these questions and running multiple scenarios past the guy.
|
Agreed all around. The death benefit is the cash value plus the guaranteed death benefit. You can withdraw the cash value at any time, but obviously that reduces the amount of the death benefit you get. You could zero out the cash value, leaving only the guaranteed death benefit.
And I also agree that the cash value is what is producing the income that could potentially cover the premium. In my case, the annual dividend/interest (however it is categorized) is approximately equal to the annual premium, which means that if I apply the income to the premium, (1) I don't have to pay the premium out of pocket, and (2) the cash value is not reducing (just not growing) and (3) therefore, the death benefit is not reducing (just not growing).
Of course, the annual income is not -- to my knowledge -- fixed, so in a down economy that amount could be less, and insufficient to cover the premium, meaning that I would either need to come out of pocket to cover the premium, or let the cash value reduce.
Hopefully this all makes sense. Hopefully I have all this RIGHT!!