Posted on Tue, Aug 31, 2010
Despite the fact that most American families have less to fall back on financially than when the economic downturn began, about
35 million U.S. households neither own their own life-insurance policies nor are covered under employer-sponsored plans, according to a study by LIMRA, an insurance industry research firm.
The Trends in Life Insurance Ownership study, conducted every six years by LIMRA, found that only 44 percent of U.S. households presently have individual life insurance. While the need to protect their families against the devastating threat of financial disaster is increasing, the number of U.S. households that have no life insurance whatsoever is growing. Today, 30 percent of households (35 million) have no life insurance coverage, compared to 22 percent of households in 2004. Among households with children under age 18, which arguably have the greatest need for life insurance, 11 million have no coverage.
“With so many families continuing to struggle financially, there has never been a more critical time for people to own an adequate amount of life insurance,” said Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, president and CEO of the LIFE Foundation. “This study shows that Americans place great value on the need for protection and half of all families recognize that they need more life insurance than they have, and that’s good news. Now they need to take the next step, and get the coverage they lack before it’s too late.”
Families Don’t Know Where to Turn for Help
About one in four middle-market households admit they don’t know how to obtain or reach their financial goals, including buying life insurance. One of the biggest obstacles is lack of information. Almost eight in 10 U.S. households currently do not have a personal life insurance agent or broker to turn to and most of them say they never did.
Younger generations say they are interested in gathering information about life insurance online and at their place of work. To connect with up-to-the-minute information on life insurance policies and options, compare life insurance rates, or get answers to frequently asked questions visit the Life Insurance Learning Center at Efinancial.com.
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Posted on Fri, Aug 27, 2010
It took a relative newcomer, a fledgling startup from outside the hallowed halls of the banking industry, the personal finance field or the investment community to show the financial world how personal money management could be done online.
Mint.com was acquired by Intuit, a veritable household name in financial software, just one short year ago. Now, Intuit will officially shut down its flagship
Quicken Online Website and direct its users to
Mint.com.
What Mint.com does better than practically anybody else these days is give you a global snapshot of your financial picture at a glance. It manages to do that by logging into each of your personal checking, savings, credit card and loan accounts, using your encrypted login and password information to do so, and compiling that information into a personal dashboard of figures and pie-charts, all with fingertip controls.
Want to monitor each of your accounts with just one simple login. Mint.com will save you that time, and its round-the-clock reporting and budget alerts will mint you freshly saved money. And, as they say, that is just the tip of the iceberg.
By tracking your financial activities in several budget categories, Mint will alert you if there is a sudden change in ther picture. It will alert you, via instant message, email, smartphone alert, or all three, when the focus changes. “A large deposit of $1500 has been posted to your checking account.” ”A low balance of $345 has been detected in your savings” ” You have exceeded last month’s automotive budget by $100.” Some banks charge for dropping below a minimum balance while others charge for accidental overdrafts. Mint.com minds your money like a watchdog to keep you in the know. It’s your money? Do you know what is could be costing you?
Previous users of Quicken Online will need to set up a new Mint.com account if they do not already have one but will be able to manually import certain account data into Mint.com by adding Quicken Online as an account in Mint. Quicken is also encouraging existing customers to export their Quicken Online data as a CSV file for backup purposes. All transaction and account data will be wiped from Intuit’s servers beginning on August 29.
Want even more online convenience? Choose Efinancial to make buying life insurance just that easy by clicking and picking from America’s best insurance values! Your free insurance rate quote awaits!
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
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Posted on Tue, Aug 24, 2010
It’s time to hit the school books again for America’s youth. Only this September, there’s a tougher economics lesson on the chalk board
: How to manage the tighter budgets of today’s chilly financial climate. Between pens and notebooks, backpacks and electronics and back-to-school clothing, the average family is expected to spend $606 per student this year according to the
National Retail Federation. That’s a higher number compared to last year’s average of $549, even though the economic indicators have flat-lined.
This year’s economics homework is all about supply and demand. So here’s your Answer Guide for how to supply your students with the gear they’ll need and demand more for every dollar.
The Three R’s of Cyber-Coupons: Reductions, Rollbacks and Rebates
To leverage more buying power from national brand names, this year’s coupons are cut out to save you “scholar dollars.” No actual scissors are necessary for these cost-cutters. Just print and go!
Savings.com offers discounts across the (vulletin) board. Start your savings at their Back-to-School page link.
Educationalwarehouse.com is where the teachers shop for its learning tools and games—everything from puzzles and puppets to software and stickers. Classroomdirect.com has great prices on over 10,000 products and a clearance corner offering even deeper discounts.
RetailMeNot combines one of the Web’s top destinations for “coupon codes” you can when checking out, to a community of savvy shoppers to advise you on tips and greater deal info from other sites. You also can have the week’s most-popular coupons e-mailed to you. We link direct to the back-to-school section.
CouponWinner.com has nearly 20,000 coupons from about 9,000 retailers. The site’s Coupon Scout tool lets you compare coupons from up to five retailers. Click on a category, such as women’s apparel, and the Coupon Scout tool will compare your savings.
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
Efinancial.com
Posted on Fri, Aug 20, 2010
For many families preparing to send their sons and daughters to college this September, the cost of tuition is an investment that is second in size only to a home mortgage. A four-year undergraduate program now averages between $15,213 and $35,636 for one year.
And yet, according to a 2009 study by Student Monitor, 27 percent of students (or someone they know) had to withdraw from college mid-semester due to health issues or a death in the family. Until now, tuition insurance was typically available only at select private colleges and universities.
A first-ever national group policy from GradGuard ™, a service of Next Generation Insurance (NGI) Group, LLC. marks the first time that tuition insurance is available to any student enrolled in an accredited higher education institution across the country.
Parents may mistakenly believe that colleges refund tuition in the case of unexpected illness, injury or even death. In fact, the organization known as College Parents of America reports that most colleges and universities do not provide a full refund if a student is forced to withdraw from school for medical reasons. Through GradGuard, all parents and students now have the opportunity to protect their investment in education.
The GradGuard plan is available to students nationwide and covers verifiable losses connected to the cost of attendance. This includes not only the loss of non-refunded tuition payments, but also academic fees, room and board, books and travel to and from the academic program.
Send a student back to school? GradGuard also offers a Student Protection Plan ™, a bundle of insurance and lifestyle benefits designed to protect college students including emergency medical evacuation insurance, identity theft protection and resolution services, and protection for their personal computers.
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
Efinancial.com
Posted on Tue, Aug 17, 2010
Is this an episode of
Monk, or
Murder She Wrote, or maybe
Law and Order, Insurance Division? A Los Angeles fraud ring sought to cash in on life insurance policies for individuals who were still living, according to an
FBI investigation. The group prepared death certificates and staged a funeral where they buried an empty casket!
On July 30, the last defendant indicted in the insurance fraud ring, mortuary worker Jean Crump, 67, was convicted by a federal jury. She was found guilty of two counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud. She could be sentenced for as many as 90 years in prison. She and her accomplices will be sentenced by a federal judge in November.
Crump and her three accomplices, who all pleaded guilty, sought to defraud insurance companies of $1.2 million in life insurance claims for individuals who never died. The group caused false death certificates to be prepared, purchased a burial plot, staged a funeral and buried an empty casket to convince insurance companies the death was real.
After two insurance companies began investigating the claims, Crump and her accomplices exhumed the casket, filled it with a mannequin and cow parts, and had the casket cremated. Crump and her accomplices filed false documents with the Los Angeles County stating that the remains were cremated and scattered at sea, even though no corpse existed,” according to an FBI statement.
Tired of funny business when it comes to something as serious as life insurance? Get a real deal and the best life insurance rates with Efinancial.
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Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
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Posted on Fri, Aug 13, 2010
Need a term life insurance rate quote
fast? How about term life insurance coverage with
no medical exam? Or maybe you’d like to quickly compare the
most competitive term life insurance rates among America’s top insurance companies? You simply won’t fly any faster than when you do your shopping online with
Efinancial and tap the power of your personal computer or smartphone to get the ball rolling…
in a split-second!
Efinancial can furnish you with competitive life insurance rate information in mere nanoseconds after processing only a small amount of data — your zip code, height, weight, and gender. (Just like the box on the right!) That includes options to get life insurance with no medical exam.
If we have your pulse racing with the technical details of speedy Internet transmission, you may find this fascnating. The global average Internet connection speed is on the rise, after a temporary plateau in the second quarter. The average global connection speed is now 1.7 Mbps. If you happened to apply for life insurance in South Korea, you’d travel the fastest yet. That country maintained its position as having the highest average connection speed worldwide, and was joined by Ireland as one of two countries in the top 10 posting quarterly gains of greater than 25%. The United States saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds, increasing to 3.9 Mbps, from a year-over-year perspective.
If you live in Delaware, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia or Utah you can also be quite pleased with your region’s Internet speed performance as those regions each increased upwards of 15% in average connection speed in the last quarter according to Acamai’s State of the Internet report.
Good news travels fast. And the good news is that wherever you live, you are only a few nanoseconds away from a free life insurance quote for your family. Accelerate your thinking today, and make sure your family is protected in the nick of time!
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
Efinancial.com
Posted on Sun, Aug 08, 2010
A life insurance policy can be of enormous help in the event a loved one dies. But what if you can’t find the life insurance policy, or don’t know any details about it – not even what company the insurance was with?
A special Policy Locator Service, created by the Medical Information Bureau or MIB for short, may be your best resource. MIB’s fraud detection services are used by most life insurance companies to help underwrite insurance applications. The MIB Policy Locator Service taps into the data base of the MIB Retail Division to scour 170 million records and investigate whether the deceased had applied for a life insurance policy at any time after December of 1996.
It’s not difficult to lose track of life insurance coverage for a loved one. Policyholders may fail to inform beneficiaries of the policy’s existence because they subject is too unpleasant to to discuss. On other occasions, survivors are aware that a policy existed but don’t know the name of the insurance company. Depending on the life of the policy, an Insurance company may have changed its name or been acaquired out by by another company, deepening the mystery even further.
The detective work can be all- important. While insurance companies would like to pay out what is rightfully due, the responsibility to claim benefits lies with the beneficiaries. If you suspect that a life insurance policy may have been applied for since after December 1996, MIB may be able to help.
Insurance Locator Services – Born in the Aftermath of 9/11
Where did the idea for a Life Insurance Locator Service come about? It was the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks that led to its creation since many policyholders kept their life insurance policy information at work. When insurance information was destroyed in the World Trade Center bombing. MIB came to the rescue by helping survivors locate missing life insurance information and get the benefits they were due – all for free. Two years later MIB commercialized the service and began charging $75 for a search.
Here are some guidelines to keep in mind if you consider doing a missing insurance policy search.
• MIB only has information on individually underwritten life insurance, not group insurance. This means insurance through one’s employer will not be recorded.
• If the policy was applied for prior to December 1996 or the person died prior to that date, it will not be contained in the database.
• Persons eligible to submit a search request are the representative of the decedent’s estate (executor or administrator) or the surviving spouse. If there is no estate representative or surviving spouse, then a child of the decedent may submit a search request.
Here’s how to order a Missing Policy Report.
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
Efinancial.com
Posted on Thu, Aug 05, 2010
Finalists in the
Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, a
$10 million competition to inspire a new generation of super fuel efficient vehicles, survived all on-track testing at Michigan International Speedway (MIS), and will now move into a Validation stage before prize money will be awarded this September.
What began as a field of 136 vehicles from 111 teams has now been narrowed to an elite group of nine vehicles from just seven teams that have proven they can meet the strictest requirements of this competition, including the ability to achieve at least 90 MPGe on the way toward the ultimate 100 MPGe requirement and to survive grueling dynamic safety and range tests.
The teams represent a wide variety of backgrounds that include emerging start ups, entrepreneurs and universities from around the world. All have proven that they can more than handle a variety of very difficult real-world scenarios.
Finalists were required to pass a repeat of technical inspections and on-track Efficiency, Range and Dynamic Safety events conducted by the competition’s technical team and auto test engineers from partner Consumer Reports.
“These finalists highlight true innovation in fuel efficiency, and prove that their vehicles have the ability to withstand strict safety, performance and emissions requirements. These cars redefine what is possible and set a new standard of efficiency that promises to revolutionize the industry,” said Eric Cahill, Senior Director of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE.
Team standings and vehicle performance details are available at http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/team-central
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
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Posted on Tue, Aug 03, 2010
July and August have the highest percentage of births for any month in America. While new parents across the country are adjusting the air conditioning in baby’s new nursery, please allow your friends at
Efinancialto offer some timely advice. First congratulations are in order for the proud new family. As the old saying goes: “Children may be priceless but if we waited until we could afford them to raise a family, none of us might ever become parents.”
Truly, the best advice for new parents to be is to begin planning the baby budget as soon as possible. The first baby step? Prepare a spreadsheet detailing the cash flow streaming or trickling into your household and what expenses you’ll likely face – in the short term and the long.
So just how much does it cost to raise a child? According to USDA estimates, middle income families will spend between $11,650 and $13,530 a year while upper income households dig considerably deeper into their pockets, shelling out between $19,380 and $23,180 a year.
A baby born during the past year will cost a middle class family $286,050 by the time that child reaches age 18 and can easily range as high as $475,680 based on household demographics and when adjusted for inflation.
The reality is that most families will spend far more than these figures since there are child-related costs that aren’t included in the government’s statistics. First, it doesn’t take into account the cost of college or all the money that many parents start setting aside for education when their little ones are still in diapers.
The USDA expenditures also don’t include the cost of life insurance. Sure, buying term or whole life isn’t a requirement for parents. But many of us choose to purchase policies that could run several hundred or even thousands of dollars a year to help support our children should anything happen to us. We politely suggest that Efinancial can save you a great deal in this budget category starting with a free rate quote at http://www.efinancial.com.
Is there a silver lining in the financially cloudy forecast? Interestingly, a family’s biggest expenses — housing and food — were the same back in 1960 as they are today. Only, we now actually spend a smaller percent of our child-rearing expenditures (16% versus 24%) at the supermarket.
Clothing and transportation are also cheaper today. Families spend just 6% of their kid budgets on their children’s wardrobes today versus 11% back in 1960. And transportation costs account for just 13% rather than 16% of expenditures.
Where is all of the baby budget going? Blame child care and health care costs for the biggest spikes. Two income families in 2009 are handing over 17% of child-rearing expenses to caregivers and education expenses. The other big increase is in health care costs, which have doubled over the past 50 years. Families now spend 8% of their expenditures on it versus just 4% back in 1960.
To get a
Term Life Insurance Quote or Research how to
Buy Life Insurance Online visit
Efinancial.com