help life insurance

charlie11

Me and my wife are 54 and 53. our mortgage has just recently finished, which were tied in to endownments. We have a pru bond which matures in 2012, this also has life insurance tied in. We do have isas. My question is after the pru bond comes out, we do not have any life insurance, at this moment in time I am working and would get a lump sum from work if I die while being employed, I hope to retire at 60. Then I will have no life cover for any of us. I need ideas of what to get, ie another endownment, a whole of life policies or something else that is on the market. I would just like to have something that covers our funeral costs.
Thanks

brianrhill

Hi Charlie,

Endowments remain unpopular for a number of reasons, understandably so. If you want life cover purely to cover funeral costs then there are some fairly inexpensive plans on the market specifically to cover this eventuality.

Possibly as important as life cover is critical illness cover - you are far more likely to suffer from and survive a critical illness of some type over the next 20 years than you are to die from one, and its pretty obvious that your quality of life would be adversely affected to some degree. Medical advances mean that people seriously need to plan their finances with the possibility that they may live to 100 or more (there are already over 11,000 people aged over 100 years old) and may outlive their money, and therefore reliant on state benfits which are obviously only of subsistence level for pensioners.

I would suggest, however, that you consider taking an overiew of your financial affairs with an IFA, as without decent professional planning in place most people have very poor retirements to look forwards to.

Good luck,

Brian

McKneff

The op said he would just like something to cover funeral costs.

I am in the same position when i finish work i wont have any cover either.
You could live to 100 and pay in to the insurance thousands of pounds
in insurance and just get the cost of a funeral back.

We have enough money in a separate ISA to cover our funeral costs when the time comes so personally i am not going to gamble my money with insurance.

brianrhill

You always have the option to self-insure, and for some people this may be the only cost effective option.

You are clearly unlikely to have to pay £000's in premiums simply to cover funeral expenses.

Brian