Turn Life Insurance into Cash

As I get older, I’m naturally paying more attention to things like retirement funds and life insurance policies. I want to make sure that my husband and I have enough money to live on once we both retire and/or that the surviving partner will get a good settlement from our life insurance policies should something happen to one of us.

I’ve also been thinking of what I would do if I didn’t need my life insurance policy anymore. For example, what if I found out that I was terminally ill and would die in just a couple of years? I know my husband wouldn’t need the funds from my policy because he’s still healthy and has a long career ahead of him, so I’m sure we’d want to cash in my policy so that we could use the money to make my final years memorable. Or, what would happen if both of us lived well into our 80s? Life insurance money wouldn’t do us much good then, so there’s another instance where we’d want to cash in our policies to out the money to better use.

That’s why I’ve also been checking out companies that handle life/viatical settlements. These companies, such as SecureLifeSettlements.com, help policyholders sell the rights to their policies for cash that they can use right now. In most cases, the settlements far exceed the typical amount that your insurance company would give you if you simply surrendered your policy. This benefits all parties involved, and is an option that’s worth looking into if the two scenarios I outlined above ever become a reality.

Obviously no one likes to think about death, terminal illness, or life insurance any more than they have to, so I’m just glad my husband and I now have a plan in place to cover these possibilities.