Life Insurance 101 with Global Atlantic

May 7, 2025

211 3 minutes read

A life insurance policy is one way to safeguard your family’s financial future however most Americans are actually under insured figuring out how much insurance you need is not as complicated as you might think Dave Vulcan president of global atlantic’s Life Group is here to help all of us they thanks so much for being with us yes thank you for for having me so how is it that we actually calculate how much we need or how much is the correct amount yeah you know I think it’s a one of the largest impediments for people around thinking around this is how much do I need and what I what I’d start with is a simple rule of thumb everybody you know should if they’re working should have five to six times their their annual income you know as coverage at a minimum now they might get from their employer one times salary that’s just not enough but you can benchmark my rule of thumb to what you have today and just get a sense of do I have enough or not at a minimum then there are calculators that can allow you to dive deeper and look at your true underlying needs and many calculators are available we provide one as well and you know it looks at what can what kind of income we want to provide for your loved ones you want to pay off the mortgage do you want to fund college education if you have children you know do you want to cover your own funeral costs so there are simple underlying drivers for the calculation that makes sense and calculator can help you figure that out quickly well and I know this maybe isn’t sometimes a topic that we want to think about or talk about but we absolutely should be including a thing that comes along with a lot of misconceptions what are some of those that you have seen people have yeah so first is really how much do I need we’ve covered that I think the second one is cost you know people overestimate the cost one study shows that they overestimate by threefold which is you know a significant over estimate of what the underlying cost is and there are different forms of life insurance that allow you to balance you know the cost with with your needs and I think the third misconception is the life insurance isn’t just you know about providing a benefit if I die and that’s why I think it’s more of a discussion around mean living as well as dying permanent life insurance is a version of life insurance that can provide you know things like a savings vehicle on a tax-advantaged basis it can also provide key benefits around you know if I have a disability or a critical illness like cancer it can provide benefits and then end-of-life you know we’re all likely going to have some form of long term care needs and it can provide your benefits to cover that expense as well so you know the the misconception the last one is really it’s it’s just about when I die it’s quite honestly as much about when I live and I know you mentioned somewhere along the way about rates is getting like an annual exam or anything of that sort help in getting that lower the rate yeah we made we made that determination ten years ago as a company that you know people demonstrate that they’ve been to the doctor regularly you know we should give them a discount and so we built what we call the wellness for Life Rider which is an addition to the policy and if people demonstrate that that we give them discounts on their cost of insurance if they additionally demonstrate that they’ve maintained their weight within a range over time you know they can get a discount as well so you can blend the other type of coverage you you want in terms of driving down the cost you can also you know work with a rider like we’ve developed and you know get discounts for just being healthy well I feel like we’ve started this open dialogue about this important topic so I want people to continue with that where can we go online to get some more information I know you guys have a new wellness survey we can also check out there yeah the wellness survey I think just affirm that people do focus on wellness and do want to be rewarded and will be motivated to be well if they’re rewarded so it kind of goes hand in hand we have a website simply speaking life insurance com so it’s all one word simply speaking life insurance calm on there you can you know self explore you know how much do I need what are the different types of life insurance .