Making the Most of Legacy Gifts by Leveraging Life Insurance

There is a real math and science to optimizing your dollars in retirement and no other product line combines economic leverage, tax advantages and guaranteed benefits like life insurance can. Take an example of a healthy married couple who has identified $100,000 that can be earmarked for their four grandchildren. They don’t want to risk the monies in the market so they are considering a five-year CD rate of 2.25%, or a five-year annuity rate of 3.00%. The CDs are taxable. The annuity is tax deferred, but ultimately taxable. But the same $100,000 in a survivorship guaranteed universal life insurance policy could generate around $500,000 tax-free. That’s leveraged, tax advantaged and guaranteed.

Often seniors have favorite charities that they have been contributing to for an extended period of time and have a desire for those charities to continue into perpetuity. Gifting with life insurance can multiply the value of the gift many times over. But for many retirees, their monthly cash flow doesn’t permit them to contribute much every month, and they usually don’t have much money left at the end of their lives to give to charity. Their hearts are big, but their wallets are small. Here’s where life insurance can be a significant charitable enhancement. Remember, you don’t have to be rich to use the same strategies that the wealthy use.  Many affluent retirees use life insurance to leverage their contribution dollars to charity, and so can you.

Another tactical use of life insurance is to protect the surviving spouse (usually the female) in a marriage. When one spouse dies the income from Social Security can be cut in half.  Could your spouse maintain their lifestyle with half the benefits gone? Life insurance can protect the lifestyle of the surviving partner and cover the loss of income.

Life insurance is a powerful planning tool that can help you optimize your retirement.