Hi everyone, my name is Jeff Beck,
Financial Advisor with The Tranel
Financial Group and today we want to
talk about protecting yourself in
protecting your loved ones. So it's been
a huge topic of conversation recently
with the COVID-19 pandemic going on and
we're doing it from a health perspective
obviously when we talk about wearing
masks, social distancing, keeping our 6
feet apart from people, washing our hands
regularly more often than we're used to
doing, right, a lot of different tips on
how we can protect ourselves from this
virus. One thing we've noticed as we've
been getting a lot of other questions
from people about how to protect
themselves financially and this
situation is really just brought on
those questions. So people are starting
to think what if I got this virus, what
if this happened, what if that happen?
There's a lot of concern about not only
themselves, but again protecting their
family and their loved ones financially.
So today we just want to briefly talk
about some different ways that you can
protect yourself financially. We're not
going to go into too much in detail, but
we do just want to give you a brief
overview and then of course if you have
additional questions we can always set
up a phone call, a zoom meeting, in-person
meeting, whatever it might be to get any
additional questions answered. But first
and foremost we wanted to talk about
life insurance. So in general there's
really two types of life insurance right
we have our whole life insurance, which
the purpose of that is to have life
insurance coverage for the entirety of
that person's life. Right so there's
really two components to that. The main
purpose of course is a death benefit,
right, God forbid that something happens
to you that, you leave a death benefit
behind to your spouse, your family, your
loved ones. etc. To protect them when
you're no longer there. So that's really
the first component of that. With whole
life insurance the additional benefit is
that there is a ongoing savings that
occurs. So there the policy begins to
build cash value which you can also
utilize it points down the road if need
be. So that's a really
nice policy it's a little bit more
expensive to utilize whole life versus a
term policy which I'll talk about here
in just a second, but again you build
cash value and it lasts for the entirety
of that person's life. Term policy on the
other hand is just that it's a life
insurance policy for a specified term, so
with that you might buy a 10, 20 or
30-year policy that will cover you for
that specific term. If you were to pass
away in that 30 year term a death
benefit is then left behind to your
family and loved ones right just like in
a whole life policy. The big difference
is there is no savings component to it
it, does not build any cash value, once
that term is up the insurance goes away.
So there's no longer a death benefit
there is no cash value to the policy. I
use an example a lot of times for people
think of it as home insurance or car
insurance right you pay an ongoing
premium to have that coverage to have
that peace of mind that God forbid
something happened you'd be safe and
you'd be covered, but at the end of the
day if nothing ever happens to your home
you don't receive anything back. There's
no return of premium or cash value that
it received. The insurance just is over.
So those are two really big ways that
people can start protecting themselves
when they are thinking about their
family and their loved ones in times
of this nature. One other thing we wanted
to talk about here and just very briefly
on this point is annuities, so we can't
go into too much detail just for
compliance reasons, but there are many
different types of annuities. I'm sure
some of you have heard some great things
about annuities and probably some
negative things as well and as I tell
all of our clients right there is no one
specific solution for it everybody. Every
situation is a little bit different and
there are some annuities that work for
some people and some that work for other
people, some don't work for anybody in
their situation, so you can't just use a
blanket statement that annuities are
always great and are always a great tool
to
yourselves, but in a lot of cases they
can be a piece of how you protect
yourself and your loved ones. Some of the
main reasons why people would use
annuities is to one protect your income.
Right, once you get to retirement and you
no longer have a paycheck from working,
you want to make sure that paycheck
lasts all the way through retirement.
Just like we want Social Security to do
that, if we have a pension, right, we
expect those will last for our lifetime.
We want the same thing for any of our
other income sources and annuities can
be a great way to do that. Another reason
you might use annuities is for the death
benefit purpose, so very similar to the
life insurance that we just spoke about
right it's about leaving behind that
legacy and/or just protecting your
family God forbid something happened to
you. So that's another big important that
an important piece that annuities can
provide if maybe you don't qualify for
certain life insurance policies or
they're too expensive because of health
conditions you may have; annuities can
provide that as it is a different avenue
to take. Really the last reason is just
protection of assets right annuities can
provide guaranteed interest rates, fixed
interest rates, so instead of being
invested in the market; instead of seeing
your life savings fluctuate it gives you
a way to provide some protection to
those assets that you have. So those are
really the main reasons why people use
annuities. As I mentioned there's a lot
of different types not every type offers
all of those benefits some offer some
time off or all right there's different
ways that you can utilize annuities for
your situation but those are really the
main reasons why you would use that.
Lastly I just want to touch on a
strategy that we utilize with our
clients. Again I won't go into too much
detail on this, but something we put
together with our clients is what we
call our growth in income bucket
strategy and really the purpose of this
is two things, it's to give you a
consistent and protected income. Right, we
just talked about that with annuities
how they can provide that so the income
portion of that we want to be protected
and we want it to be safe so it lasts
throughout your lifetime and the other
portion of it the growth side is to
provide you with flexibility. Right, to
provide you with assets that can
continue to build over time so you don't
run out of money and again to give you
that flexibility. We realize throughout
life things happen and we have
emergencies that come up we need to make
sure that we have adequate assets on the
side to be able to cover expenses like
that and again all this kind of comes up
right now because unfortunately these
times we're seeing a lot of struggles
different struggles for every single
person in every situation, but a lot of
things are coming up where people are
losing jobs right they might be
furloughed they might have some medical
expenses because of something I've had a
loved one passed away and all of those
things create some difficult situations.
Where some protection using some type of
those planning strategies whether it's
life insurance, annuities or our growth
and income bucket strategy can really
put you in a much much better place than
where you were prior, so like I mentioned
this is just a very brief overview
overview just kind of want to give the
the basics of how some of these products
and vehicles can work and how they might
be a piece of your plan as you move
forward. So like I said if you have any
questions whatsoever about this stuff
you want to get some more details, you
think it might be the right fit for you
you, have a friend or family member who
you think this might benefit, please just
let us know give us a call we are
working remotely for the most part, so
we're doing phone call meetings, we're
doing Skype or zoom meetings, but we also
just recently opened our office and so
we are doing in-person meetings if
people feel comfortable doing that as
well. We obviously have the office set up
to follow all the CDC guidelines to have
mass available to keep our social
distance here, hand sanitizer, etc. So
either way, however we meet happy to do
it. just let us know if you'd
like any more
information on any of these tools that
you can utilize to protect yourself and
your loved ones. Again, my name is Jeff
Beck with The Tranel Financial Group
and hope you guys have a great day. Thank you.
