CANCEL GOFUNDME CULTURE | Getting Life Insurance - YouTube

hey wealth builders welcome back to another  episode of the bemused my name is Meshack and  

i'm Akeiva and on this channel we talk about all  things personal finance for young adults just like  

you and us so if you're into that kind of stuff  go on ahead and hit that big red subscribe button  

and while you're at it hit the notification  bell so you never miss me post new valuable  

videos just like this one and in this video  we're going to be talking about life insurance  

now i already have a feeling that the youtube  algorithm is not going to like this video  

but that's okay because it's a message that needs  to be heard anyway because this is a personal  

burden at least on my heart at least because i  feel like life insurance is something that is not  

i don't even say it's not talked about it's  known it's not some people talk about it but  

when it comes to actually acting and taking out a  life insurance policy it's something that doesn't  

happen as often as it should especially within the  Black community and other minority communities and  

that is why i think it's especially important to  highlight life insurance at this time during Black  

history month i know that the typical rigmarole  that i've seen at least in my circle is that  

when somebody passes away immediately you see a  gofundme set up and i think i'm just so it saddens  

me every single time i see that happen where it's  like this family doesn't have enough resources  

to do what they need to do to move on you know  and to survive without this person even just so  

much as to bury them you know sometimes families  don't have the money and it really pains my heart  

when there are you know families who might be  able to afford life insurance who just don't  

so we're going to talk a little bit about  our experience getting life insurance what  

is life insurance why it's important and why it's  something that we think everyone should consider  

so at its core what is life insurance life  insurance is very similar to other types of  

insurance essentially it protects not  the person who of course passes away  

but it leaves something behind for their family  for whoever needs to uh you know use the resources  

that person provided in order to sustain you know  maintain their lifestyle there are different types  

of life insurance policies there are permanent  life insurance policies those typically are an  

asset to the person taking them out a lot of them  they accumulate cash value over time as you pay  

premiums and the premiums sometimes can be a lot  depending on the type of policy that you have and  

then there's also term life insurance which is  a really popular type of insurance especially  

among younger people where you pay you know a  certain amount of the premium every single month  

there is no value built up it just is you have  a policy for the term that you've set it out  

for whether 10 years 20 years 30 years whatever  the term is of that policy then once the time is  

up you stop paying if you don't die you just  stop paying there is no other value to you  

it's it's just gone so that um in a nutshell of  the two basic types of life insurance policies  

now let's talk a little bit about the process  of getting approved for a life insurance policy  

and a little bit of our experience  going through it because we recently  

took out policies for ourselves each person's  experience might be a little different but for  

us and we're not sure if it was due to our age  due to the insurance company that we decided  

to go with but we did not actually have to  do any sort of health affidavit or anything  

like that i mean they they asked us some questions  about health but with some other insurance  

companies you actually have to take a form to your  physician they have to complete it and sign off on  

that and that is what the insurance company uses  to analyze uh your worthiness before it goes to  

the underwriting stage yes so it's important to  know that in our case we are young relatively  

healthy people no major pre-existing conditions  or anything like that that would disqualify us  

from getting kind of the preferential rate to  life insurance we specifically chose companies  

that did not require us to go through the  exam process there were a few options out  

there but we specifically chose the ones that  didn't require that because especially in the  

middle of a pandemic who's trying to voluntarily  go into a doctor's office right now they don't  

have to not us so that you know that was great  they just asked questions over the phone and  

it was fine so to put some more context around  why we think this is so accessible especially  

for younger people of course the younger and the  healthier you are the cheaper your premiums are  

we took out term insurance policies for on the two  of us and our monthly premiums you guys saw this  

in our budget it's under 25 dollars a month  for the both of us for you know pretty long  

term honestly policy of a few hundred thousand  dollars each so just to tell you kind of like  

it is within reach for some people it's just  the more you know the more you can apply  

um so that's basically uh you know our situation  one important note if you're trying to get life  

insurance during this hair pandemic we ran into  a couple of roadblocks with that specifically  

because of our honeymoon at first we tried to  take out these policies you know right after  

we got married essentially and they were like well  do you have any out of the country you know travel  

booked and we're like yeah and they're like  well that means your premium is going to go  

up by this amount and we were going to be paying  that premium for the next you know few decades  

and then like that doesn't make any sense just  because we had an out of the country you know trip  

planned in the middle of the pandemic so basically  they were like you can either pay the premiums or  

cancel the flights or wait till you come back to  take out the policies so that's what we ended up  

doing was wait until we got back from our trip to  enact the policy so that we would qualify for that  

lower regular rate so if you're trying to take out  a policy and you have international travel plan  

it might present a problem and to break that  down again just to make sure that we're all on  

the same page here the reason why the insurance  company was you know increasing those premiums  

is not beside really just because of the  pandemic it is a higher risk for you going  

out of the country and you know possibly  passing away out there and we have no idea on  

international laws on death and all that sort of  stuff so it might have been a little bit more of a  

you know difficult situation for them so they  were like look if we are going to take this risk  

then you have to then pay more money so that's why  they were charging us more so when we got back on  

u.s soil you know we could apply and put in our  application and then the answer or do you have any  

out of the country travel in the next 90 days or  whatever the time period was the answer honestly  

would be no so a couple of questions you might be  thinking of if you're saying well how much life  

insurance like what should i actually do about  this information if i want to take out a policy  

where should i look so getting a life insurance  policy is pretty accessible with these online you  

know aggregators out there that's personally  the route we took is we just went online use  

a very popular aggregator site that looks  for different insurance policies for you  

and that's what we did and we looked we compared  and we looked for a couple of key things  

so one the premium of course we wanted to be  competitive and on the lower end of the the  

options you were seeing two we wanted to make  sure that it was a financially sound company we  

actually ended up taking out policies there were  two different companies that our policies are with  

and we wanted to look at the financial health of  those companies because the last thing you want is  

to take out a policy like this especially it's not  like it's a one-year policy this is probably going  

into you know decades in some cases where you want  to make sure that companies gonna be around if you  

need to you know collect on that life insurance  policy so they have the ratings there and you can  

look into more research as to what those ratings  mean most of them have like letter grades like an  

a or you know double a whatever those ratings are  you can look into those and see what they mean so  

that was the second consideration that we really  took into account when we were choosing policies  

and third like we mentioned before ones that  did not require us to go in and have a physical  

done in order to get approved for the policies  so those are the three things that we looked at  

when we were comparing policies then you might  be asking well how much insurance do i need  

and that honestly depends for us this really is  kind of like a star starter insurance as we're  

kind of as i kind of refer to it as you know  just a few hundred thousand dollars each where  

in the event something happens to us at this  stage of life where the other person is able to  

continue their lifestyle and not have as big  of you know a financial burden where they're  

able to live comfortably and really just  you know not be in a financial bind because  

now we're missing someone's income so for us  that was just a few hundred thousand dollars as  

you guys know the only debt we have right now is  student loans which die with you so it's not like  

the other person would have that to pay really  it would just be you know maintaining the house  

and maintaining their lifestyle so it's not to say  that this is all the insurance we'll ever get in  

our lives will we get more insurance in the future  we might when we get less we might it also depends  

there are some people who are wealthy enough  to self-insure where something happened to them  

their family is straight and they don't need to  necessarily take off these huge life insurance  

policies so really like i said for now this  stage of life it works for us but we'll see  

kind of where life goes in the future and if we  do need to increase our insurance later on or not  

but for now we also didn't want to overpay for  insurance like we don't want to be over insured  

either because that definitely can be a thing you  don't want to have too much we don't want to have  

too little either and bringing things full circle  back to that comment about how it affects people  

that look like us right so again we are not you  know oblivious to the fact that there are people  

out there who are struggling random pandemic  where there are people who have lost jobs have  

lost their homes so we are completely sensitive  and understand that but the reason why we believe  

that insurance is so important is because it's  really something where you're not thinking about  

self you're thinking about the people that you  are that are leaving are coming behind you it's  

about that child it's about that spouse it's about  that whoever it is if you don't have any kids your  

parents your parents however it is um because at  the end of the day regardless of whoever you might  

have uh that you are leaving behind you want to  have something so they can at least bury you at  

the bare minimum so even if you choose not to  do an insurance policy like ikeva said if you  

want to choose to self-insure where you have some  money put aside in a savings or a checking account  

where if god forbid something happens to  you that it's enough to at least bury you  

look into it find out how much the average funeral  cost is and if that's the route that you choose to  

take if you're relatively young in your 20s you  don't have any kids there's nothing wrong with  

that you know because most of your debts would  probably die with you i'm assuming you know but  

when you have a spouse when you have children when  you have a home when you have a parent who decides  

we depend on you our sibling who's depending on  you you want to like i said think about them in  

in all that you're doing it's not about you  and something a story that comes to mind is  

actually one that we studied in high school which  was a raisin in the sun where that black family  

was able to go from struggling to actually  surviving and they didn't have you know the  

insurance policy was what they were waiting on  to buy that home that is what insurance can do  

for the people who you are leaving behind where if  you choose to have a larger amount of money where  

the house can be paid off where now there's no  mortgage to worry about for you know your spouse  

or mom and dad or for your children where  that can go towards your child's college  

fund whatever it is that you and your spouse if  you have children in that situation decide to  

to do those are the type of things  that that insurance policy can help  

cover or you know alleviate any issues like that  yeah so my hope is for a world where there's a  

lot less gofundmes out there that seems to just be  the default answer whenever somebody passes away  

where we're seeing a lot less of that and a lot  more generational wealth being created through  

life insurance so thank you so much for watching  don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the  

notification bell so you never miss when we post  new content we'll see you in the next one bye