12 Questions to Ask Before You Buy Life Insurance

The questions worth asking before you buy life insurance are not about price. They are about who you are buying from, what the contract actually guarantees in writing, and what happens to the policy in year eleven. Price matters. It is just the easiest thing to compare and the least likely thing to go wrong.

Most people shop this backwards. They ask what it costs, get three numbers, pick the lowest one and sign. Then years later they find out the premium was only level for five years, or the term ends at 60 while the mortgage runs to 68, or the agent who sold it is no longer in the business. None of that was hidden. Nobody asked.

Here are the questions worth asking, grouped by who you are asking. Print this, bring it, and ask.

Answer These for Yourself First

You cannot judge a recommendation if you do not know what you are trying to solve. Four things, before anyone quotes you anything.

• Who depends on my income? A spouse, kids, a parent you help, a business partner. If nobody does, your answer may be a small policy or none at all, and a good agent will tell you that.
• What debt does not die with me? A mortgage, a co-signed loan, a business note with a personal guarantee. Those land on somebody.
• How long does the need last? Until the house is paid off, until the youngest finishes school, or for the rest of your life. That answer drives term versus permanent more than anything an agent says.
• What can I actually pay every month, for years? A policy you stop paying for protects nobody. Pick a number you will still be fine with when the water heater goes out.

If you have not put a real dollar figure on the coverage itself, start with the walkthrough on how much life insurance you need, then subtract whatever your job already gives you.

5 Questions to Ask the Agent

1. 1. Are you independent, or do you represent one company? A captive agent sells one carrier's products. An independent agent is appointed with several and can compare them. Neither one is automatically the wrong choice, and plenty of captive agents do excellent work. You just need to know which you are talking to, because if someone can only sell one company's policy, that policy is going to be the recommendation regardless of your situation.
2. 2. How do you get paid, and does it change based on what I buy? The carrier pays the commission, not you, and it is already inside the premium the company filed with the state. So this is not a gotcha question. It is a fair one, because commission is generally a percentage of premium and that percentage is not the same across every product. Ask it. An agent who gets defensive about how he earns a living just told you something.
3. 3. Where can I verify your license? Every state has a license lookup on its department of insurance website showing license status, lines of authority, and in many states any disciplinary history. Ask which states the agent is licensed in and go look. It takes two minutes.
4. 4. Am I calling you in five years, or a service line? Beneficiaries change. People get divorced, remarried, have another kid, pay off the house. Somebody has to help with that paperwork. Ask who handles service after the policy is issued, and get a direct phone number and email.
5. 5. What are you not recommending, and why? This is the best question on the list. An agent who has actually thought about your case can tell you what he ruled out and the reason. Term instead of whole life because the need ends. A smaller face amount because the budget is real. An agent who cannot name a single option he considered and rejected probably did not consider any.

7 Questions to Ask About the Policy

1. 6. Is the premium level and guaranteed, and for how long? Level term means the premium stays the same for a stated period. Some coverage is priced in age bands instead, so it steps up every few years. Both exist. Ask which one you are looking at, and get the guaranteed period in writing rather than in conversation.
2. 7. What happens at the end of the term? Most level term policies do not simply switch off. They often continue on an annually renewable basis at a price that climbs steeply every year, which is designed so that almost nobody keeps it. Ask what the contract says happens the day the level period ends.
3. 8. Can I convert this to permanent coverage later, and until when? A conversion option lets you turn a term policy into permanent coverage without answering new health questions. That is worth real money, because health is the currency you buy life insurance with and you spend it whether you use it or not. Conversion rules live in the contract and they usually expire at a certain age or after a certain number of years. Ask for the actual policy language.
4. 9. Which numbers in this illustration are guaranteed? If you are being shown whole life or indexed universal life, you are being shown an illustration, and every illustration has guaranteed and non-guaranteed columns. Only the guaranteed side is what the carrier is obligated to deliver. Ask to see the policy run at the guaranteed assumptions, and ask what happens if you skip a payment in year seven. If the whole pitch lives in the projected column, you are buying a maybe. The term versus whole life breakdown covers how these products differ.
5. 10. What riders are included, what costs extra, and what triggers them? Accelerated death benefit, waiver of premium, child riders, disability provisions. Some come at no additional cost and some do not. The part people skip is the trigger. A rider that only pays under a definition you will never meet is not a benefit, it is a line on a brochure. Ask what has to happen for it to pay.
6. 11. What is the contestability period, and what could get a claim denied? Most policies can be reviewed by the carrier if death occurs inside a contestability window, commonly the first two years, and a material misstatement on the application can mean a denied or adjusted claim. There is usually a separate suicide provision with its own window. This is the reason you answer every health and lifestyle question honestly, even when somebody suggests a detail is not worth mentioning. A cheap policy that does not pay is the most expensive thing on this page.
7. 12. Who is the carrier, and how strong are they? You are buying a promise to pay money decades from now. Ask for the company's ratings from the independent rating agencies, and look the company up yourself instead of taking the summary.

If You Already Own Coverage, Ask One More

If somebody is telling you to replace a policy you already have, ask for a written side by side comparison, and ask why the old policy cannot simply stay in place while you add new coverage on top of it.

Sometimes replacing is the right move. Sometimes it is not, because the new policy is priced at your current age and health and a new contestability period starts over. It should never be a casual decision.

Red Flags Worth Walking Away From

• A deadline that does not exist. Life insurance is priced off your age and your health. A rate that expires tonight is a closing tactic, not underwriting.
• One company for every single situation. A 28 year old renting an apartment and a 58 year old with a paid off house do not need the same product.
• You cannot read it before you sign it. You are entitled to see the full illustration and the policy form. Anyone unwilling to send them is telling you what is in them.
• A premium check made out to a person. Premium goes to the insurance company. Always. Never write a check to an agent personally.
• Filling in your health answers for you, or suggesting you leave something off. See question 11. That is your family's claim being set up to fail.
• No questions about you. If the first ten minutes are a product presentation instead of questions about your family, your income and your debt, the recommendation was made before you got there.

How to Actually Use This List

1. 1. Write your four answers down before the first conversation. Who depends on you, what debt survives you, how long the need lasts, what you can pay.
2. 2. Ask the five agent questions on the first call. They take about three minutes and they tell you most of what you need to know.
3. 3. Ask for the illustration and the policy form by email. In writing, so you can read it when nobody is waiting on you.
4. 4. Run the seven policy questions against that paperwork, not against what you remember hearing.
5. 5. Find your free look period the day the policy arrives. It is on the first page. Read the policy inside that window, and confirm the name and spelling of every beneficiary while you are in there.

Here is the part that surprises people. A good agent likes these questions. They make the job easier, because the whole conversation stops being about price and starts being about what you are actually trying to protect. Anybody who wants you to move faster than you understand is solving for something other than your family.

Frequently Asked Questions