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Informed Decisions, Haledon, NJ (2026)

03/03/2026

To meet the U.S. daily gasoline demand of 326 million gallons, approximately 17.16 million barrels of crude oil are needed each day. This estimate assumes that each barrel of crude yields about 19 gallons of gasoline after refining.

02/25/2026

1. Social Security:

a.

Social Security is a government insurance program that provides monetary assistance to the retired, disabled, or poor. Workers pay into the program through payroll and upon retirement they are provided with retirement benefits, disability income and survivor benefits.

2. Traditional IRA (individual retirement account).

a.

An Individual Retirement Account is a tax advantaged investing tool that individuals use:

i. To set aside funds for retirement savings. In most cases, contributions made into a traditional individual retirement account are tax deductible, but when the individual withdraw the money, the withdrawals are taxed at the current income tax rate.

3. Roth Individual Retirement Account:

a. Unlike a traditional Individual Retirement Account, Roth Individual Retirement Account contributions are not tax deductible. However, the individual can withdraw from the account upon retirement without incurring any income taxes.

02/25/2026

What will Long Term Care Insurance cover?

1. Depending on the policy, long-term care insurance can help cover senior living, including home health care, respite care, adult day care, assisted living communities, nursing homes and memory care.

2. Policy costs vary, but generally speaking, the younger you are, the more affordable long-term care insurance can be.

3. Try to work with a trusted financial advisor to make sure you're getting the right policy for your future needs.

02/25/2026

1. Risk classification is a process of determining a prospects risk. Risk pertains to the likelihood that a person will experience loss or death.

a.

Things that can negatively influence your risk classification are:

i. History of disease in the families certain physical conditions, such as diabetes or obesity, heart or stroke.
ii. Dangerous hobbies or professions. iii. The information gathered during the underwriting process will determine if the prospect is insurable, and if they are, what the premium cost will be!

02/25/2026

What is Insurability?

1. Insurability relates to weather a client is insurable or uninsurable.

2. Insurance companies determine if a client is insurable or uninsurable through a process called underwriting!

02/25/2026

What is individual life insurance?

1. Individual life insurance, or individual plan, is the life insurance policy acquired by an individual to ensure oneself, a family member, or business partner.

2. An individual plan is a life insurance contract between the insurance company and the individual.

02/25/2026

1. Group life insurance, or group plan, is an insurance policy required to insure a group of people.

2. In most cases, this type of policy is found in the workplace.

3. Employers often purchase group insurance policies as the benefit to their employees.

4. With group plans, the employer will receive a master contract, and each of the employees covered by the policy will receive a certificate indicating their coverage amount.

02/25/2026

What is an annuity interests crediting rate?

1. In addition to the current interest rate announced by the insurer, each fixed annuity and fixed indexed annuity has a minimum guaranteed interest-crediting rate. This is the rate at which the insurance guarantees that it will credit, at a minimum, no matter what interest rates are in the economy or how profitable its investment assets are.

02/25/2026

What Is An Annuity?

1. The term "annuity" refers to an insurance contract issued and
distributed by financial institutions
with the intention of paying out invested funds in a fixed income stream in the future. Investors invest in or purchase annuities with monthly premiums(deferred)or lump-sum payments(immediate). The holding institution issues a stream of payments.

02/25/2026

1. What determines premium costs?

a.

As you have just learned, the information gathered during underwriting will decide premium
costs:

i. If the client is placed in a high-risk category, their premium cost will be higher. If the client is placed in a low risk category, the premium cost will be lower. Therefore it's important to get life insurance sooner rather than later.

2. The younger the client is the greater chance they would be in good health, which means they will pay less premiums for coverage.

3. The older the client is, the greater chance they will have health complication, which means they'll have to pay more in premiums for the same coverage.

02/25/2026

VARIATION OF WHOLE LIFE INSURANCE PRODUCTS

1. Although the majority of life insurance policies sold involve whole life insurance, universal life insurance, or term life insurance, other lesser-known life insurance plans are available. Many of these life insurance products are actually hybrids or combinations of two basic types of life insurance packaged as a single product and designed to meet identified consumer needs.

a.

Principal among the whole life insurance product variations are:

i. ADJUSTABLE LIFE INSURANCE- adjustable life insurance is life insurance that may have the characteristics of whole life insurance or term life insurance, depending on the adjustments made to the premiums and death benefits by the policy owner. The premium, death benefit, and length of time are all adjustable by the policy owner. A policy owner who increases the policy's death benefit without also increasing the premiums paid will generally have a life insurance product that resembles term life insurance. Similarly, a policy owner who reduces the death benefit and pays the same premium (or keeps the death benefit the same and increases premium payments) may be termed an adjustable life insurance policy that resembles term insurance into a whole life insurance policy.
ii. ECONOMATIC LIFE INSURANCE- economatic life insurance is a combination of whole life insurance and decreasing term insurance normally sold by mutual Life Insurance companies. Dividends, if any, are used to buy additional paid-up insurance. As the term insurance portion of the total death benefit declines, paid up insurance is added in an amount equal to the reduction in the term Insurance amount. As a result, the death benefit remains level. Since the product is sold as a combination of whole life insurance and decreasing term life insurance, the annual premium is often considerably smaller than it would have been if all the life insurance had been whole life insurance. The cash value at any duration is also smaller than it would have been if the entire death benefit had been provided under a whole life insurance policy.
iii. FAMILY INCOME POLICIES- a family income policy also involves a combination of whole life insurance and decreasing term insurance. Upon the insured's death before the expiration of the term insurance, the beneficiary receives a lump sum death benefit from the whole life insurance portion of the policy and income for the remainder of the term. Family income policies have declined in popularity because of their general inflexibility.
iv. ENDOWMENT POLICIES- few endowment policies are now seen. However, endowment policies were once quite popular and were normally purchased when policy owners wanted to ensure that a specific amount of money would become available at a certain age or at the end of a specific period. Endowments at age 18, tenure endowments, and 20 year endowments could provide the needed funds exactly when desired. The policy would provide death benefits equal to the endowment amount until the endowment date. Cash benefits would be paid on the endowment date, and the policy would end. Such policies were popular as a way of ensuring that cash was available to pay for the costs of a child's education or for some other planned expenditure. Although endowment policies continue to be popular in other countries, changed tax treatment in the United States has all but eliminated their use, accepting qualified plans.

02/25/2026

VARIABLE UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE

1. Variable Universal Life (VUL) Insurance has all the flexibility features of declared-rate universal life insurance. In addition, it has the investment features of variable life insurance policies and the tax advantages of all other life insurance policies. As in other types of universal life insurance, the cash values are held in a separate account, and the performance of the separate account can affect the cash value and amount of the death benefit.

2. Variable universal life insurance does not require specific premiums to be paid at specific times. The policy owner can make premium payments in amounts and at whatever time he or she chooses. Loads can be either "front end" (meaning deductions are made from each premium paid) or "back end" (meaning they are deducted at the time a policy owner withdraws cash from the policy during the surrender charge period). These deductions are not taxes. They are sales charges or fees, typically associated with annuities or certain insurance products, not government taxes. Taxes may still apply to withdrawals depending on the type of policy or annuity, but loads/charges are not taxes. They are simply product fees.

3. As with securities investments of any kind, losses are always possible. If the cash value should decline to the point where the cash value is insufficient to pay for the cost deducted by the insurer, then the policy owner will be given a certain amount of time to deposit enough money in the policy to cover the insurer's deduction to keep the policy in force. If the cash value is not increased, the policy will lapse.

4. As in all universal life insurance policies- with the exception of those providing secondary guarantees- whether a variable universal life policy remains in force depends on the sufficiency of the policy's cash value to enable the insurer to make its monthly deduction to cover expenses and cost of insurance. If the cash value is insufficient, a variable universal life policy will lapse regardless of the amount of premium paid by the policy owner. Thus, a variable universal life policy owner could pay the maximum permitted premium and policy could still lapse if the cash value did not cover the monthly deductions.

Informed Decisions

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