Best Life Insurance For Woman Aged 61
Expert Review Of The Best Life Insurance Options For A 61 Year Old Woman
Reviewed by
Jim Tobin, CFP®
Why you can Have confidence in this review
At Life Insurance Help Desk, we value our editorial independence. We keep our reviews strictly factual so you can use them to make informed decisions. Life insurance carriers referred to on this site do not approve reviews.
As an independent insurance agency, we often come across applicants of all ages who are looking for answers that are actually relevant to their case. While the Internet is full of articles about life insurance, they tend to be generalized in nature and are not really useful beyond a certain point. To resolve this issue, we’ll be talking about 9 important life insurance questions that we frequently hear from 61-year-old women.
Do I need life insurance at age 61?
This is the first question that everybody asks us. The answer boils down to this – do I require life insurance for ensuring the financial security of my loved ones and dependents?
If you already own enough liquid assets that will look after your dependents’ financial requirements, the answer is a clear ‘No’.
Keep in mind that your assets need to account for the following:
Your final expenses, like your funeral and burial costsTuition for your children and grandchildrenRemaining mortgage paymentsA reliable income source for your spouse and dependents.
If your assets are not sufficient enough to pay for these expenses adequately, it’s wise to go for a life insurance policy.
What kind of Life Insurance Policies are available at age 61?
There are four kinds of insurance policies that you can select from. Each type serves a different purpose.
Term Insurance – This is the most cost-effective choice you have when taken on a per benefit dollar basis. It will protect your family until you’ve accumulated enough retirement savings. However, this policy ends when the term period is over. Renewing it can be incredibly expensive.
Guaranteed Universal Life Insurance – It is similar to term life insurance policy, except that it lasts until the age of 121. Unlike a permanent policy, a guaranteed universal life policy doesn’t build up any cash values. While it’s more expensive compared to a term policy, they’re also cheaper compared to whole life policies.
Universal Life/Whole Life – They are permanent life policies that build up cash value. Your monthly payments also include an ‘overpayment’ component that gets saved. Whole life policies tend to be heavily customized and aren’t available on our quote tool. You can reach out to us to learn more about them.
Burial Insurance – These are called final expense insurance policies due to their small face value. They don’t require any medical exams and are extremely lenient with underwriting requirements. However, their costs are on the higher side, compared to the benefits offered. Face value does not exceed $30,000 under any circumstances.
Term life insurance offers greater protection at lower prices whereas burial insurance and GUL offer limited coverage over a longer period of time. Universal life and whole life insurance policies are ideal for applicants looking to accumulate savings instead of focusing on just protection, which gets reflected in the premiums you pay.
Will My Health Qualify For A Policy At 61?
You will always qualify for an insurance policy, one way or another. The trick is in qualifying for the insurance policy that you need.
GUL, term, and cash accumulation products tend to be underwritten similarly. Regardless of whether you undergo an examination or not, the underwriters will evaluate your medical history, driving record, prescription history, weight, and height. The underwriting process tends to be more stringent for these policies and can take over two months.
However, burial insurance can be underwritten and delivered on the same day and has a less stringent underwriting process. But this coverage tends to be capped and costlier when compared on a per dollar benefit basis.
If you want to know whether you’ll qualify for your preferred policy or not, simply reach out to us at Life Insurance Help Desk. Those of you who are hesitant to do so can make use of our underwriting quote tool, which will offer all the information you need regarding the requirements of different insurance carriers.
What Will Life Insurance Cost A 61 Year Old Woman?
Insurance premium rates tend to differ widely, based on the life insurance product you’ve decided to purchase. We’ve provided sample pricing data for burial insurance, term insurance, and GUL insurance in this article. Simply use our quote tool to access the premium rates for various coverage amounts.
Do note that we’ve not shown the premiums for permanent insurance policies since such policies tend to be heavily customized, based on your individual requirements.
Term Life Insurance Rates for 61year old
Women
Term life premiums are generally quoted for periods of 10, 15, and 20 years. As of now, there is no policy that offers term periods longer than twenty years for women aged 61 years.
We’ve also offered pricing data for Preferred, Standard, and Standard Plus policies, which will also account for many conditions that are widely prevalent in 61-year-olds, including:
● Women Aged 61 With Controlled Thyroid Condition
● Women Aged 61 With Controlled Migraine History
● Women Aged 61 20 Lbs. Overweight
Sample term life insurance rates for Female age 61 Preferred Class with no tobacco use
Sample term life insurance rates for Female age 61 Standard Class with No tobacco use
Sample Term life insurance rates for Female age 61 Standard Plus Class with No tobacco use
Guaranteed Universal Life (GUL) Rates for 61 year old Woman
Although we’ve primarily focused on burial and term life insurance in this review, you can also look into GUL policies as a cost-effective alternative to cash accumulation insurance policies.
GUL Rates For 61 year old Female Standard Plus Risk, No Tobacco
Burial Insurance for a 61 year old Woman
Burial insurance and GUL/term insurance are completely different ballgames. Here are their most notable differences:
Benefit dollar amounts tend to be smaller – not more than $30,000.Underwriting conditions are less stringent compared to GUL/term policiesBurial insurance policies get underwritten and delivered on the very same day.Final expense insurance companies don’t operate in every state.
While GUL/term life insurance policies get graded into Standard, Standard Plus, Preferred, and Preferred Plus classes, burial insurance policies are classified into the following:
Guaranteed – The payout is restricted to the total sum of all premiums paid with applicable interest if the death occurs within three years of purchase. If the applicant passes away after three years, full benefits are payable
Graded/Modified – Benefits are available on a graded basis over a 1 – 3 year period.
Level – Benefits can be obtained in full without any waiting period.
What does burial insurance cost?
Burial insurance is considered to be expensive due to the following reasons:
Lenient underwriting terms without any exam
Policies never expire, benefits are never slashed, and rates are never changed.
Burial insurance policies tend to be more expensive than term. However, unlike a term insurance policy, they do not ever expire, unlike humans.
Sample Burial life Insurance Rates for a 61 year old Woman
How Do I Decide On a Life Insurance company?
Term
Deciding on the best company has everything to do with your health and your policy preferences.
Selecting the best insurance company ultimately comes down to your specific policy preferences and state of health.
Provided the carriers you’re currently considering hold high financial ratings, it actually boils down to the carrier that’s best for your needs and has lenient terms for your health conditions.
For instance, those interested in 25-year term policies should not go for companies like Prudential. But if you desire aggressive living benefits and other riders, go with American National.
Apart from simple policy preference, you should also remember that different insurance companies have different risk appetites for certain conditions. For instance, those in great shape should go for policies from Banner, not Prudential. But those with sleep apnea should go for policies from Prudential.
We recommend using the services of an independent experienced agent to obtain the best possible policy for your needs.
Burial
Though final expense policies do take your health status into consideration, you’ll qualify with more lenient terms than with other policies. The choice of insurance carrier does not matter to a great extent. For instance, certain carriers will even offer Day One coverage along with COPD.
With burial policies, state approval is the biggest concern since many burial insurance firms are limited to certain states alone except for Mutual of Omaha, which offers ‘Living Promise’ burial insurance across the USA except in the New York.
As with GUL/term insurance, we recommend using an independent insurance agent to find the policy that’s right for you.
Female life insurance Rates accurate?
Our quote tool gets updated every week with the latest information we receive from our sources in different insurance companies.
However, the biggest reason why our quote tool generates inaccurate quotes for some people is because they mess up while entering their health class category. Many people do not guess it properly and simply hope they’ll qualify for the preferred plus category rating. However, that category is only ever achieved by 12% of all applicants. We recommend talking to an experienced insurance agent if you need accurate information.
You can also just use our standard rates while determining your policy premiums. If you qualify for a better rating, that’s great. You’re highly unlikely to fall below a standard rating category though.
Do I Need To Take An Exam?
Term/GUL
While numerous insurance carriers offer no-exam policies at competitive rates, provided you’ve already undergone a checkup in the previous two years, some may charge bigger premiums or limit coverage amounts. We generally recommend no-exam policies to our clients since a medical examination could actually worsen your odds of getting a competitive policy.
However, no-exam policies still take your medical history, driving records, and prescription history into consideration. While the process can be sped up if needed, APS requests tend to bog down the speeds considerably.
Burial
Burial insurance policies do not require any medical exams to be undertaken. Only your prescription history and application answers are taken into consideration here. You should reveal the usage of off-label prescription medications as well.
Suicide Exclusion
All term and burial insurance policies tend to have a suicide exclusion clause attached to them, ranging between one to two years (This depends on which state the policy is issued in).
Why Use The Life Insurance Help Desk?
Though there are many options in the market, they’re not all created equal. For instance:
Carrier Direct – It doesn’t get worse than this. While you may be told that you’ll save money by going for a direct policy, truth is, it’s your state’s Department of Insurance that sets life insurance premium rates. If the underwriting terms are similar, the premiums are going to be similar as well. By purchasing directly, you won’t be able to go through the policies and terms offered by other insurance companies. You’ll also miss out on free services offered by an experienced insurance agent.
Captive Agent – It’s the same tale as above here as well. However, the captive agent might offer information about other carriers as well. But his goal will be to undeniably push you into purchasing a product issued by his employer.
National Broker – Although better than a captive agent, it does come with certain serious limitations. While big insurance brokers are independent and offer policies from multiple carriers, their range of options tend to be limited so as to ensure better commissions for themselves. They also have high turnover rates, meaning that you will have to deal with multiple agents over the term period of your policy.
Life Insurance Help Desk is headed by a certified financial planner who has inside access to more than 50+ top-notch insurance companies. Our agency strictly follows a policy of complete
transparency and will never withhold any information from you.
Thanks to our scale, we’ll also be able to pay greater attention to your needs compared to other brokers. We’ll always be here, should you face any problems or need a new policy.
How do I apply?
We’ve discussed more about the insurance application process here. Alternatively, you may also check out our homepage for a visual description. Enter your information in our quote tool and submit it to us. We’ll contact you immediately and help you complete the application process from there.
