It’s easy to think that “it” won’t happen to you. And it’s even easier to think that when you are young. That’s why many young couples spend much more time choosing wedding invitations or their honeymoon destination than they do protecting the new family unit they’re creating.

Life insurance is certainly not top on most young couple’s minds. It’s something that they’ll think about, perhaps, when they start a family or move into their first house. But time doesn’t always wait for our “someday” plans to come to fruition. It’s best to put those plans into action before time decides it has other plans.

Melissa Wandall understands this better than most young women. She and her husband, Mark, were expecting a baby within weeks. Feeling tired after a day’s work, Melissa decided to stay home and put her feet up instead of joining her husband and brother for dinner out. As she kissed her husband good-bye before he left, she had no idea it was the last time she would see him.

As he was returning home that night, the car Mark was in was broadsided by a driver who ran a red light. He died less than a week after celebrating their first wedding anniversary and just 19 days before the birth of their daughter, Madison Grace.

While Mark is no longer there to spend time with his vibrant wife and watch his beautiful daughter grow up, he did make sure that they would be taken care of. As a young life insurance agent, he had made sure that they had proper amounts of life insurance in place in case anything were to happen.

That life insurance has allowed Melissa to remain in the family home, take time off from her career so she can be a full-time mom, and put money into a college fund for Madison Grace. The insurance has also given Melissa the opportunity to keep Mark’s spirit alive through two important causes that she has started in his name. (You can watch her story here.)

Through LIFE’s realLIFEstories program, Melissa has graciously shared this story with the public so that others, especially those who are young and growing their families, can understand the importance of having proper amounts of life insurance—now.
It’s time for LIFE to gather stories like Melissa’s for the 2010 realLIFEstories Client Service Awards.

And while the realLIFEstories application is for agents and advisors to fill out, I encourage anyone who has been touched by the benefit of insurance—life, health, disability or long-term care—to let their agent know that it’s time to share your story with America.

The stories that are chosen will be featured in a September 2010 issue of Newsweek, which reaches nearly 13 million Americans. In addition, you and your agent (each with a guest) will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Seattle, Wash., this Sept. 11 to 14 to attend the award ceremony. The deadline for entries is Wednesday, March 31. I encourage you to take this opportunity to reach out and touch others’ lives with your story.

I thought it was interesting that according to Unum’s 4th Annual Landscape of Long Term Care, in 2008, 68 percent of its customers who used their long-term care (group) benefit received care in their own homes. This is a trend worth watching, as many people mistakenly believe that long-term care is for taking care of the elderly in nursing homes. UNUM reports that more than half of its claimants are under the age of 65.

On the flip side, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 50 million people provide this type of care for a family member. Here is a further breakdown as to who is providing the care, according to UNUM:
o Daughters and daughters-in-law: 18%
o Friends, neighbors, hired caregivers, grandchildren and siblings: 16%
o Sons and sons-in-law: 9%
o Mothers, fathers and extended family such as nieces and nephews: 5%

Does this describe you—are you currently taking care of someone? And what about your parents—do they have proper coverage or are you going to be their plan? Who would take care of you if something were to happen?

What is important to remember is that there is a cost to providing this care even if it’s done by a family member. Long tern care insurance with a home health-care provision is a must. Talk to your financial professional to determine the best options for you.

I recently read an online article about the U.K.’s Baby Boomers and their children. It seems the U.K. has concocted several new categories of acronyms and neologisms (I had to look this up. It means a word that is in common use, but hasn’t been accepted into mainstream language yet). Yuckies are Young Unwittingly Costly Kids: 20-somethings who live at home or are causing undue financial strain on their parents. The article quoted several surveys showing that Yuckie parents have drained as much as one-fifth of their savings and that one-third have remortgaged their homes. Kipper is the U.K. term for boomerang kids and stands for Kids in Parents’ Pockets.

These are just different name with the same meaning: kids that are eroding their parents’ retirement savings. So the Boomers in the U.K. are doing the same as their U.S. counterparts: Spending my Kid’s Inheritance, or as they say in the U.K., SKIing.

The SKIing phenomenon has migrated to Canada and showed up in The Province with the article “Crack That Nest Egg,” by Lorraine Mallinder of the Financial Post. According to the article, increased longevity and the recent economic downturn make it even less likely that there will be anything left for the kids. These trends are also mirrored in the United States.

If you or your kids fall into these categories, perhaps you should rethink your planning and insurance needs. Sit down with your agent or financial advisor to ensure that you have made the right decisions for you personal situation.

Do you know that your life insurance agent gets paid when she helps you purchase a life insurance policy? And so does a financial planner, if you’ve chosen to go that route, instead. Sounds fair: professionals being paid for offering their expertise to help you shape a better future. It happens all the time across many professions from real estate to medicine.

That may be set to change, at least for life insurance agents.

Recently, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced financial-services reform legislation in Congress. Both the House and Senate bills refer to the “harmonization” of financial advice under something called the fiduciary standard. This “fiduciary” standard has largely been pushed by certified financial planners as the only standard that can ensure the American public is receiving objective advice under a “duty to act, primarily for the client’s benefit in matters connected with the undertaking and not for the fiduciary’s own personal gain.”

The logical extension of this change could result in the SEC outlawing commissions as an acceptable form of compensation. The assumption would be that commission motivation is, de facto, proof of the agent not acting “primarily for the client’s benefit.” That means if a life insurance agent helped you buy your policy, he would not be able to get paid the way he’s been paid in the past, as his means of payment is a commission on the sale of the policy.

Is this really in the best interest of the American public? Well, the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting tells us that studies show that less than 17% of fee-based plans are ever implemented. Fee-based planners get their fee for a plan, but they are not obligated to make sure it’s put into action. Is that in the client’s best interest?

If a fee-based planner charged $150 an hour for three hours to analyze a client’s life-insurance needs and suggested a $500,000 term insurance policy that has a $300 annual premium, is the client better served by paying $750 in fees and premiums instead of just the $300 premium that he would pay if he got that advice from an agent?

Why is a life insurance agent, who may devote hours of work with no assurance of compensation, automatically assumed to be less faithful in his “duty to act primarily for the client’s benefit” than the fee-based planner who won’t begin work until the client has signed an agreement and paid a fee?

John F. Kennedy once said: “In a very real sense, insurance sets standards of performance and responsibility for all American business. Surely Americans derive their image of business most often from the relationships they establish with their insurance agents. The varied services performed by American insurance can do much to carry forward our traditions of freedom.”

Most insurance professionals I know have no problem with the idea of fee-based planners getting paid by fees. But fee-based planners, evidently, want to eliminate the practice of insurance professionals being paid by commissions.

Maybe Rep. Frank and Sen. Teddy Kennedy’s best friend in the Senate, Sen. Dodd, should look again at what President Kennedy said before they hit the wrong notes on “harmonization.”

I published a blog the other day discussing the potential trillion-dollar shortfall in the funding of state-employee pension plans. Here we have another study showing people will need to work longer to fund their health and pension benefits.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute published a study recently showing that Americans age 55 and older are staying in the workforce longer as they are faced with higher health costs and economic losses. For those age 55 to 64, which EBRI labels the “near elderly,” this increase is due almost exclusively to the more women staying in the workforce. However, among those age 65 and older, labeled the “elderly,” the labor force is increasing for both men and women.

Workers are facing more responsibility in paying for their retirement expenses typically through self-funded 401k plans, and retiree health insurance is becoming increasingly scarce. As a result, the study says that workers today have greater incentives to stay in the workforce to accumulate additional assets in defined contribution plans and to have access to employer-based health insurance coverage. The alternative is to tap into their savings to pay for their expenses.

The study, which is based on U.S. Census Bureau data, shows that private-sector Americans, age 55 or older, who were in the labor force declined from 34.6 percent 1975 to 29.4 percent in 1993. However, since 1993, the labor-force participation rate has steadily increased, reaching 39.4 percent in 2008.

The study also shows that education is a strong determinant in an individual’s continued participation in the workforce at older ages. Individuals with higher levels of education are significantly more likely to stay in the labor force than those with the lower levels of education.

The upward trend is not surprising and will likely continue because of workers’ needs to access employer-based health insurance and for more earning years to accumulate assets. This also drives home the point that it is not too late to sit down with your agent or other financial professionals to determine a plan of action and set obtainable goals for a deferred retirement. If you have not done this, pick up the phone and do so now. If you wait too long, some planning options may no longer be available.