Life Insurance: It’s Not Just For Your Parents

Most of us know you can use assets in a retirement investment account or an annuity to generate income during retirement. But did you know you can use certain kinds of life insurance policies to do the same thing?

What kind of life insurance?

There are two primary types of life insurance: term and permanent. To use an analogy, think of a term policy as renting a home, and think of a permanent policy as buying a home. Similar to building equity in a home you are buying, permanent policies usually have a feature where they accumulate money inside them called Cash Value. In the same way that a mortgage payment is divided into principal (equity) and interest (the cost of the loan), the premium payment for a properly designed permanent life policy is divided into Cash Value (equity) and the cost of insurance (paying for the actual death benefit). In addition to your own money, the insurance company typically credits your policy with interest or dividends each year, so the Cash Value grows over time.

Note: There are different types of permanent policies (for example, Whole Life, Universal Life, Variable Universal Life, etc.) and they each have their plusses and minuses. Describing the differences would be lengthy and outside the scope of this article. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to base the rest of this article on Universal Life.

So far, it sounds like an expensive savings account. What am I missing?

Using a life insurance policy to accumulate savings has some key differences from a savings account at your bank. First, the life policy offers tax deferred growth. In a bank savings account, you must report the interest you earn every year and pay income tax on it. The Cash Value in a life policy gets to grow tax deferred, just like in a qualified retirement account. Without having to pay taxes along the way, your money grows faster.

Second, the interest rate that an insurance company pays is typically much higher than the interest rate that a bank will pay on a savings account. For example, at the time of this article, the national average interest rate on a bank savings account is 0.06%1, whereas universal life policies typically average around 3%-5%.2

The biggest difference between Cash Value and a bank savings account has to do with taking the money out. With a bank account, you can only take out the dollars that are there, but there is a way to take money out of a life policy that is leveraged3.

OK, how do I get the money out?

Although the insurance company would allow you to simply withdraw the cash value, that option has a big drawback. The amount of gain in the policy (the current cash value minus the dollars you contributed along the way) would be taxed at ordinary income tax rates. There is a better option.

Insurance companies offer a way to borrow against the cash value in your policy. The proceeds from the loan are tax-free. It is important to note that you are borrowing against the cash value, not from the cash value. That means your entire cash value balance continues to earn interest. Contrast that with any other type of account, where when you withdraw money, the only portion of your money that continues to earn is the money remaining in the account.

Just as with most loans, you must pay interest on the amount you borrow. The life insurance company will typically charge 4%-5% interest. However, the cash value continues to earn 3%-5% interest, so your net cost for the loan might only be 0%-1%. No other vehicle I know of allows you to do this!

But when I’m retired, isn’t taking out a loan a bad idea?

Typically, we want to reduce our fixed expenses during retirement. And typically, adding a fixed loan payment to our retirement budget would indeed be a bad idea. However, taking a loan from your life policy doesn’t add any payments to your budgets. None. In fact, the insurance company doesn’t even expect you to repay this loan during your lifetime. At your death, the loan will be paid off from a portion of the death benefit, while the remainder will go to your beneficiaries. In a well-designed policy, your death benefit will grow over time. This should allow you to borrow tax-free income every year during retirement, pay off the loan when you die, and still have a sizeable death benefit remaining for your beneficiaries.

One small but important caution

What makes this entire strategy possible is the way life insurance proceeds are taxed. Loans taken against the policy are not taxed, nor is the death benefit taxed when received by your beneficiaries. If you take out too much money from the policy and don’t leave enough inside to pay the continuing cost of the policy, the policy will lapse (meaning the insurance company will cancel the policy). If that happens while you are still alive, then the IRS wipes out all of the tax benefits, and all that money you took out becomes taxable. That is a tax bill you want to avoid at all costs.

How do I add this strategy to my retirement plan?

Designing a policy correctly requires experience and advanced training. Many agents who only sell policies and don’t do financial planning may not be properly trained in the intricacies of this strategy. Make sure you get your policy from a reputable advisor who fully understands this strategy, and who can show you how it fits into the rest of your financial plan. This is not the kind of policy you want to buy over the internet or from an 800 number!

https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-bank-interest-rates

Kelly, Patrick. (2007). Tax-Free Retirement

Dictionary.com defines leverage as “the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one's investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one's own liability for any loss.” http://www.dictionary.com/browse/leverage

Weak passwords can compromise the best security tools and controls. With a never-ending list of applications and services that users and consumers access, people may have dozens of passwords to maintain at any given time. Often, the temptation to use familiar terms such as pet names, favorite teams or the names of children or friends can cause risk since much of those details can be discovered by a simple examination of social media.

Creating strong passwords offers greater security for minimal effort. Weak passwords can compromise the best security tools and controls. With a never-ending list of applications and services that users and consumers access, people may have dozens of passwords to maintain at any given time. Often, the temptation to use familiar terms such as pet names, favorite teams or the names of children or friends can
cause risk since much of those details can be discovered by a simple examination of social media.

Under Lock and Key
You can buy a small padlock for less than a dollar—but you should not count on it to protect anything of value. A thief could probably pick a cheap lock without much effort, or simply break it. And yet, many people use similarly flimsy passwords to “lock up” their most valuable assets, including money and confidential information. Fortunately, everyone can learn how to make and manage stronger passwords. It is an easy way to strengthen security both at work and at home.

What Makes a Password ‘Strong’?
Let’s say you need to create a new password that’s at least 12 characters long, and includes numerals, symbols, and upper- and lowercase letters. You think of a word you can remember, capitalize the first
letter, add a digit, and end with an exclamation point. The result: Strawberry1!

Unfortunately, hackers have sophisticated password-breaking tools that can easily defeat passwords based on dictionary words (like “strawberry”) and common patterns, such as capitalizing the first letter.
Increasing a password’s complexity, randomness, and length can make it more resistant to hackers’ tools. For example, an eight-character password could be guessed by an attacker in less than a day, but a 12-character password would take two weeks. A 20-character password would take 21 centuries. You can learn more about creating strong passwords in your organization’s security awareness training. Your organization may also have guidelines or a password policy in place.

Why Uniqueness Matters
Many people reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and attackers take advantage of this risky behavior. If an attacker obtains one password—even a strong one—they can often use it to access other valuable accounts.

Here is a real-life example: Ten years ago, Alice joined an online gardening forum. She also created an online payment account and used the same password. She soon forgot about the gardening forum, but someone accessed her payments account years later and stole a large sum of money.

Alice did not realize the gardening forum had been hacked, and that users’ login credentials had been
leaked online. An attacker probably tried reusing Alice’s leaked password on popular sites—and
eventually got lucky.

Guarding Your Passwords & PINS. Passwords and PINS protect sensitive data and it's critical to keep them safe. Try these best practices to stay protected.

1. Do not write them down – Many make the mistake of writing passwords on post-it notes and
leaving them in plain sight. Even if you hide your password, someone could still find it. Similarly, do
not store your login information in a file on your computer, even if you encrypt that file.
2. Do not share passwords – You cannot be sure someone else will keep your credentials safe. At
work, you could be held responsible for anything that happens when someone is logged in as you.
3. Do not save login details in your browser – Some browsers store this information in unsafe
ways, and another person could access your accounts if they get your device.
4. Use a password manager – These tools can securely store and manage your passwords and
generate strong new passwords. Some can also alert you if a password may have been
compromised.
5. Never reuse passwords – Create a unique, strong password for each account or device. This
way, a single hacked account does not endanger other accounts.
6. Create complex, long passwords – Passwords based on dictionary words, pets’ names, or other
personal information can be guessed by attackers.