You may buy insurance outside open enrollment time frames if you qualify for a special enrollment period due to a qualifying life event. A qualifying life event could be moving to a new state, changes in your income, changes in your family size, if you marry, if you divorce or if you have a baby. If you have coverage currently, and you have a life event happen after the enrollment period, you would still be able to obtain insurance through what’s called a special enrollment period.
All posts by Debbie Sears
What Key Dates Do I Need to Know?
Please avoid paying a penalty. You don’t have to pay a penalty if you enroll in a plan by March 31st, 2014. Please click here to read about the 2014 enrollment dates. This will tell you between what dates of the month you need to have your enrollment forms in to avoid penalties. We are encouraging everyone we talk to to have completed applications to me no later than Friday, March 14th.
Applications processed between the first and fifteenth will have coverage starting April 1, 2014; for all applications processed between the 16th and the last day of the month, your coverage would start the first day of the following month. Best advice: please get to me before the 14th.
CMS Reports Predicts 65% of Small Businesses Will See Premiums Rise Under the ACA
As I work with small business owners in trying to be a consultant rather than a sales person, I spend considerable time investigating their needs, their wants, their finances and existing coverages (benefits documents) to see if any and all options available to them would better their position, rather than present them with a renewal, expect them to sign it and life goes on.
In my career, I have very seldom seen rates come down; however, if I take the time, and do the service work necessary to really show the business owner all options, I look at individual contracts as well. For instance, I have a group of 40 individuals, 20 are considered part-time (not eligible) and of my 20 eligible employees, I have 15 that are on a group contract. What would it look like if I ran individual rates on each of these individuals, allowed them to choose their own plan and encouraged the employer to contribute a fixed dollar amount comparable to what they were contributing to begin with on the group platform. It is amazing to me how much different this really appears. Each person can pick and choose the plan that best suits their individual family’s needs, which can be a broad spectrum, including their benefits and their premium.
If the job would go away, or a person is terminated, the only change would be the billing address. These are individual contracts between the policy owner and the insurance company. Changing the billing address would be the only thing necessary. Neither the employer nor the employee would have to concern themselves with COBRA.
True Stories
As life changes, and our needs change, I cannot tell you about health and life insurances without bringing up disability and long-term care. Here is a link of True Stories of people who have experienced life changing events whether this be a death, a disability, a long-term care stay, whatever the event may be and how insurance played a role in the quality of their care, being able to sustain their business, including farms, etc.
An independent agent can make an initial assessment of your needs, take a look at what you have, keep as much as what is applicable, add to or take away from the various insurance buckets so that you have a comprehensive, well thought through plan that is suitable and affordable for your needs. Then, as life changes, the adjustments to the various types of insurance you carry are easily made, but please, do not put on blinders and go through life without the safety net that life insurance provides all of us. Your decisions affect a lot of people
What’s Mommy Worth?
Life is just wonderful.
George and Jane have now gotten married. They have purchased their home and they have 3 children and everybody is doing what they’re supposed to be doing and life is wonderful. When George and Jane sat down to run the numbers on the daycare costs and the pre-school/post-school costs, and all the extra things that need to happen in any of our homes (Jane is only one person trying to keep up with the demands of 5), it came to their attention that they would be dollars ahead after taxes if Jane were to stay home and provide the quality of life that they would not get if she chose not to stay home.
In my previous post, if anything would happen to Jane, George would need to replace Jane’s efforts. In referring to the Department of Labor, I came across this link from salary.com that gives the infographics on what mom’s chores are valued at. I cannot encourage you enough to sit down with an independent agent and look at every insurance bucket there is and find out what do I have, what do I need and what do I want, and have within your budget, and within reason, your bases best covered. I see people that are over insured in one area, no insurance in the next and it seems to be a patchwork quilt that has been put together over the course of time by whomever was in front of them at that time.
How Much Life Insurance Should I Buy?
Sears Insurance relies on very credible sources for any information or advice that we provide. An organization called www.lifehappens.org has many tools to calculate our needs.
For instance, we’re going to need different amounts of life insurance, for different intended purposes. As an example, if I need a term life insurance policy to cover my 30-year mortgage, then I need 30-year term insurance. If my intention for life insurance is to cover the taxes and expenses associated with passing my assets to my loved ones, then I may need whole life insurance.
To give you more of an insight as to how this works, visit www.lifehappens.org and check out their calculator so you can play with this and get the general idea of what your needs might look like. From that estimate of your needs, we tweak it to suit your personal situation. What I mean by that, is that we factor in grants/scholarships that a child might receive for education rather than taking on the whole expense. We may factor in social security. We may factor in life insurance you may have through your employer so we don’t take the chance of over insuring.
George meets Jane – And Life Happens…
Here’s a link from EMC National Life Insurance Company entitled, “How to Write Life”.
Every life is a story. This starts out as life begins for George and Jane. Most of us at some point in our life choose a mate, make a commitment and from there until we’re no longer alive, there are mile posts that need due recognition for assessing our obligations, our needs and our wants.
This piece identifies six moments in our lives when we should acknowledge our loved ones first and our debt. These six milestones include, getting married, buying a house, having children, paying our debts, our estate planning, and our final expense. And if you click on the “Play” button in the link, it is going to give you a less than 2 minute description of the need. And what type of life insurance you should consider for the various needs. People are under the false impression that life insurance is for burial. Yes, it can be, however, it is used for many other purposes.
Love is in the Air…
Valentines Day is just two weeks away…we all show our love in every way…every day…but what if we weren’t here?? Have you ever really sat down and though about what would happen to your children, your spouse, your home, your bills, etc??? How would you replace yourself monetarily? Let’s flip the coin over – let’s say that I am alive but my spouse is gone…is my spouse the bread winner? Is my spouse the mother of my children? What is “Mommy” really worth?
The point I am making is we do need to have life insurance as a part of our portfolio. And then comes the question of how much do I need? There are ways to calculate what is an approximate need without just shooting from the dark. There is also a way to cover all allocations of our insurances within reason and still not be “insurance poor”. One of the saddest things that I see is people that are “poor” because they were either uninsured or underinsured.
I am attaching two tools that I feel are a good thought provoking place to start the process. The first one is a series of six (less than 2 minute) videos on the six times in our life that we would have the thought and the need to address and assess our individual situation. The second is a calculator that you can play with to come up with some answers of your own. If you use the calculator we can take the results you get and tweak and adjust some of the variables to come to a close range of what we feel you should consider.
We then request quotes from the carriers we represent and present those to you for your consideration. After a review of the quotes an application is submitted to underwriting for a final “offer” to you. At that time if you accept the offer, your loved ones will be taken care of in your absence.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder…pending how you have left them!
Sears Insurance loves their clients and therefore we feel we should take the time to educate you – from there you will make the right decisions for you and your family. Give us a call – our quotes are free!
Health Care Reform
Fourth quarter of every year brings high demands on our time and our energy. The health care reform situation and all of the negative that we hear, I’m sure has us all confused and tired of listening. However, we are coming into the home stretch on being compliant in having our health insurance, so now is time to get down to business and find out just exactly what do I have to do, when do I have to have it done, and how do I go about it.
There are many ways to be insured for our health. Our employer, offers us generally options that we can choose from to best suit our needs. Premium relief via the employers’ contribution, but outside of the employer options, on an individual basis, we do have an obligation and a timeline that is nearing quickly. It is still the best option to seek out an independent agent. An independent agent can offer you plan choices that best suit your needs, discuss with you the meanings of all of the acronyms (ACA Plans, Grandfathered vs. Non-Grandfathered, HMO, PPO, POS, Co-Payment, Co-Insurance, Deductible, Maximum Out of Pocket, HSA, HRA) just to name a few.
I still feel we should safeguard our maximum out of pocket expense and understand how we arrive at that during any calendar year. From there, let’s be sure your everyday needs are addressed, such as prescription drug benefits, office visits, etc. If our plan selection best suits your needs, most of the time, it is an affordable premium. Remember, there is no underwriting anymore. Some people will win, and some will know they did not, but please give us a call. We can cut through the complexities and make this simple to understand.
Purchasing Health Insurance on an Individual Basis
Another way to buy health insurance would be on an individual basis.
If I have an employer that has an employer sponsored group health plan, it is always nice to run a comparison and see what the rates would look like if everybody chose an individual plan that best suited their family’s needs. For instance, I may not need or want a low deductible, or co-insurance. I may want an HSA as opposed to my co-worker whose family with age, health and structure, may have different needs than myself.
In a scenario that I am currently closing, the cost of insurance for everyone to have the individual plan that they chose that best suited their needs, came in at an approximate 50% savings as opposed to their employer sponsored plan. At that point, the employer and the employees negotiate what is “fair” for a contribution towards this cost. The employer is saving money. The employee is saving money and everybody has what they personally need or want.
I strongly encourage that in addition to an independent agent an employer bring to the table their CPA. It is important that everyone on the payroll has the same opportunities and shares the same contribution equally. If a person would leave the employment, they merely change the billing address and go on their way. This is usually less costly than COBRA and there’s no panic in searching out an occupation or a job for the mere sake of the health piece.
If you seek employment and group insurance is an offering, have your independent agent line up the benefits, opposed to the cost and the numbers will literally make your choice for you. Please call me. It is worth your while to know and understand all of your options.
