Everyone knows that sinking feeling when you realize that you forgot to take care of one important point . It could be something as minor as forgetting to set the DVR for your favorite reality show. Or maybe something important, like leaving home with a pot of boiling water on the stove. As a quick punch to the gut, the panic hits you like no other. I felt the same sense of panic when I realized I had to leave my life insurance policy lapse.
Like most young and growing family, my life insurance needs have changed over the years. When I married, I bought a long-term policy for $ 250,000 to take care of my beautiful new wife if something happened to me. After our first child, a new wave of responsibility hit, and I felt the need to take a long term $ 500,000 additional policy.
A few years and a second child later $ 750,000 life insurance do not seem like enough, so I took an additional $ 1.5 million long-term policy. The three policies were with three separate carriers, which makes keeping track of when the premiums were due a bit of hassle.
Since we liked to pay insurance premiums on an annual basis, we waited until we premium invoice in the mail mailed out a check prior to the life insurance company. In recent years, it went without a hitch, until now I have had a seemingly innocent conversation with my wife.
Uh oh ....
Two small premium policies had dates that were close enough. With the bonus of $ 250,000 maturing, I considered dropping it and just keep the two biggest political. I made a comment to my wife, who usually handles all the bills in our house, to go ahead and let the forfeiture of the smaller font. Be a horrible delegator, I did a bad job of explaining it to the company that was that, so instead of letting the $ 250,000 policy lapse long term, it left the policy lapse wrongly $ 500,000.
Woops ...
To make matters worse, I did not catch the mistake until several months after the date of the premium was due. Remember that panicked, sickening feeling that I talked about? This is when it hit, and oh boy, he hit hard. My mind started racing on what I need to do to get the policy reinstated. I knew I was still young and very healthy, so the worst case was locking in another affordable life insurance policy should not be a big problem. But knowing that the subscription process could sometimes take four to six weeks, it is something I am not crazy to go through again, not to mention the fact that I'm not a big fan of being bitten by needles
Placing on the phone
at the first opportunity, I'm on the phone and called the insurance company, preparing for the worst. After obtaining the representative of customer service on the phone, I realized it was not as bad as I had originally planned. I learned that most insurance companies allow a so-called "grace period". This grace period is a time, about 30 to 31 days after the premium was due that allowed you to send in payments of premiums and your life insurance policy will continue without interruption.
Apparently I'm not the only one missing payment of life insurance, thank you God. As I mentioned, I'm well beyond the period of pardonable through, so in the world of life insurance my police had officially expired. The representative of customer service informed me that all I had to do was request a form called the application for reinstatement.
Once I completed this form and mailed in control of the entire annual premium of the policy would be restored. She did tell me that if I had health problems that occurred after the policy had lapsed, I must say that on this form. As you can see, for someone who has some type of high-risk pre-existing condition that could be fatal.
How to avoid this
I am one of the lucky ones who was not injured, leaving my lapse policy, but I certainly do not want that to happen again. Instead of manually sending a check to our life insurance premiums, we now have it on auto-draft. In this way, we must experience it again!
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