| Whole life vs term??? VERY long, sorry! |
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weedlewann
First Time Poster
Cash: $ 0.25
Posts: 1
Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Location: Alabama
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| Whole life vs term??? VERY long, sorry! |
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I am a newbie to this board and I am so glad I found it! I don't know why I never looked before to see if there was a board like this...duh! I guess I am just now mentally prepared to tackle many problems we are having right now.
A little background info...I have a son from a previous marriage (I hate to even think about that marriage or whatever it was!!  ) and when he was very young, I worked 40-46 hours a week AND was a full time student with a two hour round trip commute and could barely buy food, so life insurance fees wasn't an option for me. I knew if something happened to me, that my ex, his parents, and my family would provide for him. (Stupid to think that.. I KNOW.. but I was young and broke.) I never bought any life insurance until my husband and I got married about 8 1/2 years ago. I probably got the policy a few months or less after marrying. We both have 1-2 whole life insurance policies each. I know that is dumb, but it didn't seem like a lot of money to pay at the time and at that time when we married, we didn't own anything. We were preparing to build a house and to be honest about it, we just didn't put a whole lot of thought in to life insurance. We knew that later we would have to go up to a higher amt when we had a new house.
Well, we built the house and never went up. Up until recently I couldn't watch the Suze Orman show without feeling sick at my stomach hearing about debt, FICO, etc....but now I watch to learn and improve. That is also why I am on this board. I hear Suze talk about whole life and it being a huge rip off and now I am thinking about what I need to do. I know we have got to go to term and get a larger amount, but I read somewhere or heard that they do credit checks on people getting term. OK, so I watch Forensic Files and I know there are pyschos and sociapaths out there killing for money, but is this why they do credit checks??? We only owe on our mortgage , 1 year on our car, 1 month on our truck, and about $9,000 on Misc. stuff. I don't think anyone would consider that too extensive, or at least I don't.  We had AWESOME credit until a few months after our son was born. Now, our credit really sucks. Our little boy who is 4 years old was born with several birth defects and physical needs. It is too personal to tell all the details, but we had to get a private sitter to keep him in our home while we go to our jobs each day. Since we work, my son doesn't qualify for SSI. At least that would pay the sitter! (don't get me on that soapbox!) My other son is now 19 and doesn't really "live" with us anymore.
I don't have the guts to get a credit report because I am too scared and ashamed to look at it. I know it is horrible, but I am sure there is worse. I mean our credit is REALLY bad!!!! I tried to change cell phone companies very recently (Nov.) and was turned down unless I had a $200 deposit. I know it must really suck! I am not proud of that and by March I am hoping to have every payment being paid on time. I am really proud that I am to that point.
I am considering cashing in our whole life and getting only term. I am 40 and a non smoker. My husband is 37 and uses smokeless tobacco maybe once a day. We are in good health or so I think. The insurance man came to our house and told us we didn't need to cash it in, but to take (crap... can't remember the name of it) something already paid out for like later??? or something like that?? Sounds strange to me. I know he really just wants to make something off of us and isn't really caring about what we really need. If we cashed it in, know we could use that money to pay on some things or get some payments down or something. The amount we would get wouldn't be but maybe 3,000, but it would help. I know I would need to get Term before we cashed in Whole, so I wonder how long I would need to wait before it would pay should something happen? How many years would I need to get it for or how many years would they let me at my age now? What all is involved in this?
I am just trying so hard to take control of my finances and get the life back we all had a few years ago. We had a platinum MC with a limit of over $16,000 we could use if we had wanted to, and now it is closed.  It only had around $5,000 on it.
I apologize for this being so long, but if you read all of it, you didn't mind anyway. I am just trying to figure out what to do. Also, if anyone has thoughts on cancer insurance, please tell me about it too. We are paying way to much dang much for all of our insurance through this company and I know it. Our family health and dental is not with that company, but rather where I work. At least I know that I did that right.
TIA for any advice and for listening!!
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Sat Jan 14, 2006 3:46 pm |
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Rolo
Yo' Daddy
Cash: $ 309.70
Posts: 1551
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Location: Colorado/Florida
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HOLY CRAP can you edit that with some generous use of the ENTER key?
WHITE
SPACE
important for us attention-deficit types...looks like someone dropped a box of those plastic letters...heh...or soup even.
BONG has a spreadsheet or something that compares term and whole/universal/scam insurance....Don'tcha Bong? 
"Expect me when you see me."
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Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:13 pm |
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Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
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weedlewann, glad you found MT.
That's a nice background, but you might want to summarize your main question down to one sentence.
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Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:28 pm |
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MattL
Senior Member
Cash: $ 46.85
Posts: 234
Joined: 25 Jun 2005
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Sometimes you are better off just cutting your losses and moving on. That's what I would do. You will sleep better.
Debt Elimination
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Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:19 pm |
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