6 Questions To Ask Before Buying Burial Insurance – Podcast Episode 20

In this podcast, I’m going to be discussing the six questions to ask before buying burial insurance. Question number one is, what are the coverage limits of the policy, different insurance companies have different coverage limits. And it’s really important that you understand which ones you qualify for.

And you don’t have to be super smart to do this, you can actually go to our website, and we’ve got quarters on just about every page at funeral funds.com. And it automatically calculates that for you. So if you want $20,000, and you live in Wyoming, or Florida, or Illinois doesn’t matter where you just put that in. And it will tell you all the insurance companies that you’re qualified for based off your age, gender, and the state that you live in, and the coverage amount you’re seeking.

1:20

So it’s very easy, we make that very easy, because we just provide that same quarter that we use to help our clients. And you seem like really smart when you do that. Now the only the only thing is, is you may see an insurance company with a price you like and a coverage you like. But it may not mean you qualify for it medically.

You know, if you’ve got some significant health issues or health issues, like if you had dementia, you’re not going to get qualified for any first day coverage plan. But if you just have high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, anything like that, it’s going to be no problem getting first day coverage. So understand that we work with a lot of different insurance companies.

And we specialize in first day coverage so that you don’t have to suffer through a two year waiting period. So all of the companies have different pricing. They all have different underwriting requirements. They all have different coverage limits. So we can certainly help you understand what’s going on there.

2:23

The number two question asked before buying a burial insurance is what is the premium amount? Right? That’s really important. You know, the first thing is, how much coverage can I get? And then the second question is what’s what’s it going to cost and really different insurance company is going to have different pricing. So that’s what we do is a broker is shopped around for you.

But just understand that if you’re getting $5,000 worth of coverage, it’s going to be less expensive than 15,000. But if you get 20,000 is going to be more expensive than 15,000. But it depends on your age, your gender, the state that you live in the insurance company, and your overall health. And we were experts in underwriting, we can help you understand exactly what you qualify for, and get you that lowest pricing but you can go to our website and get some general ideas and pricing just by using the free quarters on just about every page at funeral funds.com.

3:23

The third question you should ask before buying the burial insurance is, is there a waiting period and we highly recommend you do not get a policy with a two year waiting period. There is so many companies advertising out there, especially on television, where they say, hey, sign up, no questions asked and all this other stuff, you know, you’re gonna get a policy for 990 something and then you look at the fine print.

And you’re gonna say see that says like limited benefit period or something like that. And what that means. That means is you just bought a policy with a two year waiting period or that’s what they’re trying to sell you. And we really recommend against that you should never buy a policy that has a two year waiting period if you qualify for first day coverage. And that’s what we specialize it funeral funds of America, first day coverage 90 to 95% of the time we’re getting people first day coverage.

Now, the only reason you should accept a two year waiting period plan is if that’s the only thing you qualify for, you know, maybe you had a terminal illness, you have dementia, you’re on dialysis, you’re in the hospital or in the nursing home, something like that. But even even if you can get approved for a two year waiting period plan, you should ask yourself, is it even appropriate because if if you’re not going to live two years why even get a policy that’s not going to pay out? It makes no sense at all.

So just be very calm. It’s just that we help an awful lot of people who are sold to your waiting period plan. And then they call us up and find out they actually qualified for first day coverage. And it makes total sense for us to replace that for you, and get you a policy with first day coverage, and save you loads of money on your monthly premium. So let us know if we can help you out there.

5:22

The fourth thing to ask before by buying burial insurance is, what’s the insurance company’s underwriting process? We’ve kind of touched on that a little bit, you know, it just depends what you have going on. So some companies are more friendly to diabetics than others. Some, some companies are more forgiving of past medical procedures, like, you know, if you’ve had cancer, but it’s been more than two years ago, and you’re cured, and you don’t have cancer anymore.

We’ve got insurance companies don’t even care that you ever had cancer, you’re gonna get first day coverage. You know, we’ve got some companies that if you’ve been admitted to a hospital, in the last six to 12 months, they would not be appropriate companies. But then we’ve got other companies that don’t even ask if you’ve been in the hospital ever.

So it really depends on the insurance company and the questions they ask. And that’s where it’s tough for you, where if you go to our quota, and you do that, and you see all the different insurance companies, 20 30 40 different insurance companies, you’re not going to know which one you qualify for. Because, you know, it takes a certain amount of underwriting experience.

And that’s what we’re professionals at, you’re at funeral funds.com. And if you want to go get some general pricing and see what the general pricing is, that’s fine, but then give us a call. And we’ll get it dialed in and let you know exactly which insurance company you qualify for in which one you’re going to get the lowest price from. And then it’s up to you to make that decision.

6:56

The fifth question to ask before getting burial insurance or buying burial insurance is are there any additional benefits or riders. So some companies offer additional benefits on their plants, like some companies would offer accidental death. You know, if it’s included at no cost, that’s not a bad deal. But you know, all insurance costs money.

So even if they say it’s included at no additional cost, they’re not telling the truth, there is a cost, it’s probably just baked into the policy meaning, meaning the price is just included in and they’re saying there’s no extra cost, but there’s a cost for insurance, it’s just included in the price. And then there’s other companies that you can purchase additional accidental death. And it’s just going to cost a little extra money. Accidental Death is super duper cheap. The reason it’s super duper cheap is it rarely pays out. Because most people that are of the age, that they’re looking for burial insurance, they’re not going to die of an accident, they’re going to die of a health or medical reason.

8:05

So we are not huge fans of adding additional accidental death, we just think that you’re actually better off getting as much coverage as you can get, and just throw that extra money into guaranteed coverage. There’s also additional riders out there like a really nice, and I think a really important one is an accelerated death benefit rider.

And what that means is with certain insurance companies out there, you can actually get the money out of the policy before you die. Now a lot of people would go, Oh, why would I ever want to do that, then the money’s not going to be there for one I do pass away and now we’re like, oh, on contraire. There’s a way around that. So let’s say you had a, a $20,000 policy. And you went to the doctor, you weren’t feeling well, and they go I got some bad news for you. You’ve got a terminal illness, you’ve got cancer, and it has progressed so much. We only give you six to seven months to live. And you’d be like, Oh, poop, right? And that would be very difficult to deal with.

9:14

And, you know, it probably take some time to deal with maybe a month or two. But most people once they came to terms with it, they would like to get all their state estate and all their financial affairs in order so that their loved ones and family and friends and children didn’t have to scramble after they passed away. So what if you get a policy with an accelerated death benefit rider what that means is depending on the insurance company, you can get all or a portion of your life insurance or burial insurance before you actually die.

9:52

Now, we really recommend going with companies that have 100% accelerated death benefit riders And the reason we say that is, it’s just to your advantage. So let’s say you had a $20,000 policy, and you were going to be buried and you found a local funeral home, that would take care of that for right around $10,000. So you could accelerate the full 20,000, the full accelerated death benefit rider for 20,000, get all the money out in advance.

And then you could go down and pay the funeral home the $10,000. That way, when you pass away, everything’s taken care of your family members don’t have to worry about selecting anything, do anything, anything, you just took care of everything for him, and then paid with it. With the cash benefits from your policy. Now, you’re left with an extra 10,000, what do you do with that, you can do anything you want with it.

Now, a lot of times what people would do is try to take that money and do some special with it, maybe there was a trip that you always wanted to go on with your children or family or friends, maybe maybe somebody else in the family kind of needed some help, just a small amount of money here or there are maybe you had some some medical bills, or some credit card bills that needed to be paid off, and you wanted to take care of that.

So nobody else would have to deal with that. You could take care of that in advance, kind of always recommend taking some of that money and doing something fun with it. Because not only will you have those memories until the day you pass away, your family members will have those memories for the rest of their lives, which will be a lot longer than you’ll be around unfortunately, right? We, but you know, we’re all adults, we all know we’re gonna die. So the more that we can take care of take care of in advance and make sure our family members don’t suffer. It’s just the barrier is it’s a nice legacy to leave behind.

12:00

And then one other question to ask before buying burial insurance is, what if I miss a payment. So we recommend you don’t miss a payment, obviously, so but if you miss a payment, most insurance companies have a period of time where you can just pay it back and keep the follows policy in force, no big deal. Typically, that’s often 30 days, do not push it because you do not want insurance company. Give them any reason to cancel your policy, especially if your policy has been enforced a long time you want that policy to pay and you you want, you don’t want to lose all the premiums that you you’d paid into the plan.

12:43

So most of the companies have a grace period, we don’t recommend you really, really tempt fate. What we really do recommend, though, is most most policies, and the insurance agent is going to have to kind of check this box on the application, you can do what’s called a policy loan feature. And what that means is, if for some reason, your your your bank account or something was compromised, or that you change banks or something like that, and you forgot to change the payment info on your policy, then the the insurance premium could withdraw could be drafted out of any cash value in the policy. And that’s that’s that will keep your policy in force. And that just eliminates a lot of worry.

Now, we always recommend that you go back and pay back those premiums, so that your your policy is still hold because they say you had $50 premium on a $10,000 plan, and you missed two payments, that’s $100. You would if you didn’t pay that those premiums back, you would now have a $100 loan on that policy. And the policy would only pay out $9,900.

13:58

But the thing is, when you borrow borrow money out of your policy, there’s going to be a small interest charge on that. That’s going to add up each month too. So you always want to get those premiums paid back if you use it to just just to pay the premiums, pay that back into the the cash values or policy and then you don’t have to worry about anything. But it’s just what that is, is that it’s just a nice little financial safety net, that if you’re banking if a change or something like that, you’re not going to have to worry about your your policy lapsing. So. I hope this podcast has been helpful to you.

NOTE: Show notes are AI transcribed, so there may be some spelling or grammatical errors.