Joint Term Life Insurance

Life insurance is an extremely important tool to help safeguard a family’s financial life in the event of a tragedy.  It is essential that families with children start reviewing their finances and plan ahead to determine if life insurance is something that can benefit them.  It might seem somewhat morbid to plan for your own death or the death of your spouse, but it is downright irresponsible for you to not plan for it.  If either of you died you would leave your children not only without a parent, but with a really difficult financial position as well.  
There are many options for life insurance, but the most common is definitely term life insurance.  There are also some variations of traditional term life insurance, joint term life insurance being one of them.  First we’ll define term life insurance and then joint term life insurance and show why some people would choose joint term life insurance in certain instances. 

Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance is the most common and the simplest type of life insurance to explain. Unlike whole life insurance and variable annuity life insurance, which both have aspects of investing involved (basically to help make money for the insurance agent and insurance company by way of exorbitant fees), term life insurance is just simply life insurance.
You enter into a contract with the insurance company for a specified period of time, called a term. This is usually either 10, 20 or 30 years, though there are other options. You buy a certain amount of insurance, called the face value or death benefit. You’ll often see this in increments of $100,000 (for instance a $700,000 or a $1,000,000 benefit), though again there are other options.
Each year you’ll pay the insurance company an amount of money called a premium to keep the contract going. It literally is just as simple as this: if you die within the contract period, the insurance company pays your beneficiaries the face value. If you don’t die by the end of the contract period, the contract ends, you have no more life insurance, and the insurance company of course gets to keep the premiums you’ve paid all along. This is classic insurance as it ultimately amounts to a bet between the two parties over whether you will in fact die before or after the contract period.

Joint Term Life Insurance

When starting a family your interest tends to shift from your self to your loved ones. Protecting your spouse and children is a natural reaction. They say that bad news never has good timing, this is no more true than if you or a loved one suffers a life changing injury or death. For these very reasons a joint term life insurance policy can be a savior. This comprehensive policy will allow your loved ones to carry on, being financially stable enough to live they way they had in your absence.

Joint term life insurance is mechanically similar to regular term life insurance, except whereas one individual enters into a term life insurance contract, a joint term life insurance contract is bought by married couples (and common-law couples) who want to experience the benefits that are unique to joint term life insurance. This insurance, also known as “first-to-die” coverage, insures both spouses at one time under one policy. There is a term, generally 10 or 20 years, and if one of the spouses die during that term, the other will receive the insurance policy’s face value.

Why Choose Joint Term Life Insurance?

You can do a significant amount of research on joint term life insurance and still not come up with a clear picture of why someone would choose this particular type of insurance over a traditional term policy. The entire subject comes down to this: a) most people only insure one spouse under term life insurance, so this type of policy safeguards the family completely b) it is significantly cheaper to have this one joint term life policy than to have a term life insurance policy for each spouse.

I have heard fist hand from many people that they have not purchased life insurance because they can't afford it. This rational and penny pinching can come back to haunt you significantly. Should you perish you wouldn't want to leave your family in a financial bind, for this reason alone having a moderately funded life insurance policy for as little as $20 dollars a month can be enough to safeguard their collective well being. In comparison for the cost of 4 Cafe Lattes or 2 packs of cigarettes, or a case of premium beer you can be fully protected. Don't put off this life necessity any longer.