I'm 65 years old. What kind of life insurance do I need and why?
A lot of people who are 65 think that they don't need life insurance, but it's amazing almost every person that I meet that's 65 wants life insurance for some reason. They still love their spouse, they still love their kids. They still want to leave a significant gift to the charity. They might be fabulously wealthy, and don't need health insurance for the typical reason. Most people, when they think of life insurance they think of money that will help pay off the mortgage, or supply a certain amount of lifestyle to the spouse. But a lot of people who are fabulously wealthy, want life insurance to pay estate taxes. As an example, if you have a $1 million estate, your estate planning attorney will tell you that in today's world your children might have become $2 or $3 million to pay the estate taxes when mom and dad both die. The life insurance policy you buy might be able to pay for the estate taxes, leaving the bulk of your net worth to your kids. So as an example I have a client who has four apartment buildings. He's worked his whole life to finally amass a fortune, because his buildings are huge, they have a lot of units, and are worth millions and millions of dollars. He loves his kids, he wants his children to inherit a hundred percent of those buildings. Now, if he doesn't have life insurance, and his assets are mostly real estate, if he doesn't have life insurance his children will ultimately probably have to sell one or two of the buildings to pay for these taxes. So if a person says I want my kids to have all of what I have, then they need life insurance even at 65 or 85. If, on the other hand they say I don't care about my kids inheriting all this money, I didn't have any money when I started and I don't want to make them filthy rich and not work and they're not the type of kids that will appreciate it anyway, then I would have to agree with the client, because the agenda of the client comes first in my opinion. I would say you're a person that doesn't need life insurance because if you give all your estate away to charity, or you let the kids pay it then what's the point of having life insurance? So I'll be the first person to recommend not purchasing insurance and that scenario.
