Do you have children? If your like me you’ve had the thought at some point that you need to get some sort of life insurance set up for your child. As a parent myself I know how important it is to get coverage for all the risk their are in life. So in this article I’m going to cover 3 ways to cover you child life and save you a few bucks in the process.
The Additional Insured Rider
The first option you should look at when considering children life insurance plans is to look at your current policies first. With any policy you are able to add an additional person to your policy through a rider provision. In fact this is exactly how I got coverage for my children.
The additional insured rider is basically a term rider that I can add on works much in the same as a term policy but the big benefit is that a rider is usually much cheaper that setting up an individual policy for each child themselves.
As a previous insurance insurance specialist I also found that adding your child on through this specific rider also ended up being the cheapest option in most cases, however you will want to request a full illustration to know for sure. Also I’ve found Western Reserve Life to very competitive prices when it comes adding riders your policy as well
The Child Insurable Rider
The next option is another rider you can add to your existing policy, it’s known as the child insurable rider, also known the CI rider. This rider has the basic functionality as the previous rider I’ve discussed but one big difference. It only covers children and the coverage will only usually last until the child’s 18th birthday.
I’ve also found this rider to be a bit more costly versus using the additional insured rider. However companies like New York Life have been quoted to charge around 25 to 47 cents per thousand dollars of coverage depending on the type of policy you buy. So if you would buy a policy with $25,000 worth of coverage you would only pay around $11.75.
Finally, one last downside is that these riders usually only offer so much coverage. As with New York Life you can only get around 25 unit or $25,000 worth of children’s life insurance. However this also doesn’t mean they need to have more in fact my children’s life insurance policy on has $10,000 in coverage for each child which is plenty in my own opinion. How much coverage do you think your child needs, leave a comment below?
Get A Separate Policy
Finally the last option for life insurance children could have is their own policy. In fact this is what my parents did for me. They set up a whole life insurance policy with $25,000 worth of coverage.
This might have been a bit of an overkill on their part but the big benefit was that eventually once we were old enough they signed ownership of the policy over to us and we could do with as we pleased.
However the problem with this option is that it is the most expensive way to go in the end and if you have several kids like my parents did you may want to consider one of the previous two options. Don’t get me wrong their are some cheap life insurance options for children out there like Gerber Life but why do it when a rider can be so much cheaper.
My Final Thoughts…
A life insurance policy for children is defiantly a need that all parents must consider. No amount of money will ever be enough to replace your kids but having it for those just in case moments in life can help. So call your life insurance agent today and start looking at your options for life insurance for children.
