No matter what stage of life you are in, a college student, newly married, own a business, or have a family, if someone depends on you financially you should reduce uncertainty in life by protecting them with life insurance.

No family budget or retirement plan should be without professionally designed life insurance. Life insurance serves as the entire foundation of the key five pillars in retirement – Income, Investment, Taxes, Health Care, and Legacy Planning. If a negative health or event occurs in your life, it can easily destroy family finances, business finances, or your retirement plan.
If you do not own a policy, you may feel life insurance is an emotional purchase. Too many people will wait until it hits home with a family friend, a friend, a family member, or someone close before they will purchase life insurance. Serious life issues like cancer, accidents, and death strike people of every age, each sex, every economic level, and everyone from babies to Baby Boomers.

The benefits of health insurance include:

• Lower out-of-pocket costs for care since it’s shared with your health plan.
• $0 preventive care—annual check-ups, routine health screenings (mammogram, colonoscopy, cholesterol screening), and certain vaccinations are fully paid for by your health plan. This means getting routine care costs you nothing. If you had to pay for this on your own, you’d pay hundreds of dollars out of your own savings each year, or you’d make decisions not to go to the doctor, with possible impacts to your own and your family’s health.
• Coverage for unexpected costly medical care, such as hospitalization and care for a serious illness like cancer, or in the event of an accident or serious injury. That’s not to say there is no cost to you, but once you meet your deductible, your plan helps pay a large share of the cost. If you hit your annual out-of-pocket maximum (the most you need to pay in a year) then your plan starts paying for all of your care.
• Peace of mind—having a health plan may give you some comfort in knowing that there is a limit to how much you need to pay out-of-pocket for costly medical care. In addition, since your health plan pays for most preventive care, you can also have the peace of mind that you and your family can get all your routine care, with little to no additional cost. (Some plans may require a small copay at the time of a visit

Of the 54% of Americans who do own life insurance policies, 27% received or bought their life insurance policies at work in their group plans. The 27% should be concerned because Americans are either losing or replacing their jobs in record numbers. Every year that passes while you are working, you lose the ability to personally qualify for additional life insurance on your own due to an illness. You will also see the rates get higher each year with age. Then one day you possibly lose your group life insurance policy and then it is too late to properly protect your family and retirement.

In Texas, the cash value in a life insurance policy, and the principal in annuities, are each protected from lawsuits.

You can access your cash value regardless of your age. 401(k)s require you to wait to age 59.5 or suffer a 10% federal early withdrawal penalty.