As bombarded as we are with life insurance advertising, it might seem as though it is an easy task to very quickly arrive at a very inexpensive solution to all of our life insurance needs. Well, there’s no doubt that an instant life insurance quote can be found very easily on the Internet or via direct mail advertising, but can you be sure that insurance which you buy in this way is the very best choice for you and your family? After all, you pay into most life insurance policies for decades: is this really a decision you want to make that quickly? Now make no mistake, there are plenty of reputable companies online that you can count on to deliver insurance at a good price. As an example, Kanetix offers the most comprehensive insurance marketplace to compare travel insurance quotes so you can enjoy your vacation. It’s really about doing your homework.

One of the main shortcomings of instant life insurance quotes is the implication that no medical exam will be required in order for you to secure a policy. This can be very attractive to you if you have doubts about your health or even if you’re worried for one reason or another about getting a physical examination. But the very fact that insurance companies so readily offer instant insurance quotes should give you pause as a consumer.

Insurance companies are playing off your fear of an exam or disinclination visit a doctor at all. And by presenting yourself to them through the insurance application as an unquantified risk in relation to your own health, they quite reasonably group you into the “average risk” category. As you can imagine, this will result in higher monthly premiums for a given amount of coverage, even if you are in excellent health. Remember that “average” includes people who will unfortunately pass away at a very young age due to all sorts of health problem, thereby costing the insurer a lot of money. This keeps premiums relatively high for the otherwise innocuous-sounding “average” category.

And so here is the point: this is one of those situations where extending a little effort over a couple of hours could pay enormous dividends over the many years of your policy term. Whether you are thinking an instant term life insurance quote or an instant whole life insurance quote, think again. Be proactive and force the insurance company to essentially give you credit for being in at least average health. Even if you have one or two small health problems, you may still end up paying premiums that are lower than they would be if you opted for the drive-through convenience, so to speak, of a long-term insurance policy commitment based on an instant life insurance quote that locks you into a poor choice.

Going through quotes for life insurance online, it will be clear to you in minutes that whole life insurance is not the cheapest option. Term insurance has it beaten easily in the price department. You owe it to yourself though, before you dismiss whole life, to take a little time to educate yourself about the differences not only between term and whole life, but between a term policy and all the forms of permanent life insurance. You won’t make the best decision regarding your life insurance needs from one instant whole life insurance quote, because price should only be one of your criteria. If educating yourself about life insurance sounds like a lot of work, fear not: with a good, free guide to the basics of life insurance, you’ll be able to drill down and have a general idea about what makes sense for you and your family in just a few hours.

First of all, you want to have the difference between permanent and term life insurance clear in your mind. Permanent policies have a guaranteed payout, payable either to your beneficiaries when you pass away or to you when you reach a very advanced age, usually 100. They have a so-called cash value amount that normally increases through the life of the policy, that is meant to cover the death benefit payout when you pass away. Now a whole life policy is the simplest form of permanent life insurance: the premiums usually stay the same over the duration of the policy, and the cash value builds based on accruing interest. Other forms of permanent insurance like universal life, variable life, and variable universal life, allow for much greater flexibility in what you are allowed to do with the cash value. With them you a free to put the money into different investments, and/or you may vary the amount of coverage that you need with the policy as your needs change. Be aware of all this when you arrive at the lowest whole life insurance online quote: again, you need to look at a lot more than just price!

With term life, you simply pay a fixed monthly premium over a length of time specified in your policy, usually between 10-30 years. In return, if you pass away during this period, your heirs receive the death benefit payout. However, if you do not pass away during the policy’s term, and this is the key, nothing is paid out. Statistically you are likely to outlive the policy, and this is exactly the reason that term rate quotes are so breathtakingly low. (You can purchase a clause included in the the term policy that allows for a ‘return of premium’ at the end of the life of the policy, but this will increase the premiums, as you would expect.)

So whole life is more expensive than term, and allows me less flexibility than the other forms of permanent insurance– why would I buy it? Well some people prefer the straightforward nature of the policy, the idea that ‘forced savings’ will leave them better off when they retire, as it is usually possible to borrow against the cash value amount. Also, they will not be left without life insurance at the end of some arbitrary term, and be much more expensive to insure at that time. There are benefits in whole life for some people after all; if there weren’t these policies would no longer exist.

In the end though, for most people, experts advise to get a good term policy and diligently put money into investments geared for the long term. In this way, you don’t pay the often substantial fees that an insurance company will charge you just for maintaining your whole life policy. Basically the investment aspect of whole life policies is rarely worth the higher cost of the premiums, and although you won’t have a defined death benefit payout with a term policy, you will very probably have more than that amount by the end of the policy, if you do save and invest responsibly. Can you see now why there is much more to this picture than a just pulling up a free whole life insurance quote?