Why the Wealthy Use Insurance to Transfer Risk

Risk is an inevitable element of our lives. We can address it with one of two methods:

  • Transfer the risk to someone else. For example, by purchasing insurance.

  • Retain the risk by doing nothing, and try to avoid the risk as much as possible by limiting our activities and interactions with others.

Why the Wealthy Use Insurance to Transfer Risk

Risk is an inevitable element of our lives. We can address it with one of two methods:

  • Transfer the risk to someone else. For example, by purchasing insurance.

  • Retain the risk by doing nothing, and try to avoid the risk as much as possible by limiting our activities and interactions with others.

How Much Insurance Coverage Do You Want?

Let’s find the way to best design and determine the type of policy and amount of coverage with a series of questions.

Life Insurance Protects Your Human Life Value

Most people understand the value of insuring their property and would never consider driving their car without at least collision coverage. This insurance provides financial protection in the event of an accident, but more importantly, establishes the peace of mind that lets us use and enjoy our property.

Instead of driving anxiously and overly cautiously, fearing the financial loss resulting from an crash, we drive in a way that makes greatest use of our automobile’s capabilities in facilitating our transportation.

Insurance gives us the permission to optimize the value our property creates for us, especially when this optimization entails increased risk to the property itself.

Most people intuitively understand this fact in relation to their Auto Insurance. Other investors with a little more education can see the wisdom of Homeowner’s Insurance (even if they have no underlying mortgage and therefore no lender requiring this insurance.)

By insuring their home, they free up money that would have otherwise sat idle, so-called “self-insuring” against the prospect of an event that destroys the home. The small premium paid for homeowner’s insurance is more than offset by mindful investing of that otherwise idle “self-insurance” money.

However, many people who understand the value of insuring their property for its full replacement value still fail to see the even greater benefits of insuring their Human Life Value. It is our Human Life Value that is of only true worth, and it is that very value that organizes “things” to be useful. Several types of insurance products protect our Human Life Value, including Liability, Disability, Medical, and Life.

Life Insurance Protects Against Far More than Death

Life insurance is more than protecting you from the improbable premature death. When properly structured, life insurance is protecting you against unforeseen circumstances: lawsuits, bankruptcy, interest rate fluctuations, high inflation, tax hikes, long-term care, disability, and more.

Life insurance begins as a tool to indemnify your family's loss of the economic benefit you would provide if you lived.

Millions of dollars may sound like a lot of money unless it is the last money you earn. And if that is required to replace your income. Too little makes your family susceptible to inflation, interest rate fluctuations, and tax hikes.

The death benefit isn’t about the lump sum of money but the cash flow it can create in the event of premature death or most likely, how it can help you improve cash flow in retirement

years by unlocking your assets.

Discovering how much coverage an insurance company will offer is critical to protecting your economic replacement value, your human life value.

Thankfully, life insurance can be more than a death benefit, it contains cash value, liability protection of that cash, tax advantages, and even long-term care and disability benefits can be included. But for you to maximize your benefits, the policy has to be around one day longer than you are. It must be permanent (aka whole life insurance).

If it is temporary (term insurance), there is only a 1.1 percent chance of a payout. And if you drop the insurance in the future, you may have to lock away your assets to “self-insure”.

Plus, people often won’t spend their money due to the fear of outliving the funds. This locks the money away and limits cash flow.

Again, self-insurance means no insurance and you are paying at least one dollar for a dollar of insurance. Instead, consider transferring risk to the insurance company for pennies on the dollar.

A Death Benefit Unlocks the Value of Your Other Assets

A death benefit has value while you are alive. It becomes a way to coordinate assets, acting as a permission slip to use your money, to unlock and be able to invest your capital and allocate it to

the best use.

By leaving a death benefit behind, you can use more of your other assets while alive, turning small assets into bigger cash flow.

A consideration with whole life is to buy the whole life and invest the cash value when the right opportunities arise. It is available via loan or withdrawal, without penalty.

Using a permanent death benefit is at the heart of the Rockefeller Method, combined with the use of asset protection trusts. This can fund an alternative to banking for generations to come. Therefore earning interest, avoiding tax, and protecting the family fortune.

The policy that is best for you comes down to your phase of life and the timing is critical. One mistake to watch for is being underinsured because you are chasing cash value. It may make sense to buy some convertible term insurance to protect your family, your insurability and still retain the ability to have a whole life policy sometime in the future.

Cash flow must be considered. This determines the best policy for you at any given time. Even the flexibility in the policy design can be adjusted based on your situation.

Will you be using the cash value to invest? Are you simply storing money here rather than other fixed-income investments or savings? This can also impact which company to choose and how to set up your policy.

Your Whole Life Certified specialist can you help design your policy to optimize your goals.

See How You Can Mitigate and Transfer Risk

Let’s find the way to best design and determine the type of policy and amount of coverage with a series of questions.

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