Mind your own business!!

My mother never told me running a small business was easy. In fact it went something more like, “wouldn’t you be better off getting a real job?”

Whether you are in business for yourself, or work for someone, your future can be in jeopardy if you, or they, have not adequately protected the business with business life insurance. The untimely death of an owner, partner, or key person in a business when there is no business life insurance such as a buy/sell insurance policy or key man insurance in place can be the beginning of quick end.

We often think of life insurance just in terms of protecting our family from the loss of income if a parent should die, or in terms of final expense or burial life insurance. The unexpected death of a business owner or key person can have a dramatic impact, not only on their family, but on the employees of the business and their families.

If you own a business and don’t currently have business life insurance, meet with an independent life insurance agent soon and review the structure and financials of your business. The agent can then make recommendations and provide insurance quotes that help your business become a legacy to your family and your partner(s) and employees, rather than a loss to them all.

In most cases you will want to look at term insurance or possibly return of premium term insurance rather than universal life or whole life. Why term insurance? The truth is that most businesses change too rapidly to make locking in even the longer terms or permanent insurance. A more prudent approach is to look at each aspect of your business and consider the proper term length. It may take more than one life insurance policy, but with term insurance being as affordable as it is, you should certainly be able to protect your business without significant impact on your budget.

So, mind your own business! A good steward of a business will ensure that the business will survive them.

Let’s take life seriously for a moment! Valid in all 50 states and DC!

If you’re an adult with any kind of responsibilities in this world, you should be carrying a life insurance policy. That old saying that “there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes” has a lot of truth to it. The big difference is that you know when the taxes come due.

So to keep from leaving your responsibilities, whether that is a family, a business, or a debt, not taken care of, follow these instructions. Go online and make it easy on yourself. Do a search for term life insurance. Scroll down past all of the big on line brokerages like Selectquote, Accuquote, Eterm, Reliaquote, etc. I’m not saying that you can’t get life insurance there, but if you pass them up and go down to an independent agency you can a more accurate insurance quotes, get life insurance just as fast, get it at the same price and……..you’ll actually get good service.

Talk to an independent agent and tell them what your responsiblities are and ask them to make recommendations. Ask them to explain the different options such as whole life, universal life (mkae sure you ask them about a no lapse guarantee), term insurance and return of premium life insurance.

Then make a decision. Put something in force. Take responsibility.

OK. I heard someone say whoa! You want to shop around and think about it and compare things and think about it and check the company ratings and financials and think about it and beat it to death. Whoa! There’s that word again. Death!!! Remember, you know when the taxes are coming due. I’ll bet every person you know or stop on the street can tell you of a story of someone who died an “untimely” death.

So, buy the life insurance. Pay for it on a monthly basis and then do all of those things you want to do to make sure you got the best deal with the best company. If you find something better, apply for it. Once it is approved and you know you have a better deal, put it in force and cancel the one you bought. That is the responsible thing to do.

Disclaimer: All of my opinions are valid in all 50 states and DC.

How valuable is your manager??

This is a country made of small businesses and generally speaking, all of those that have employees have managers. As long as I am sailing with generalities, I think it’s safe to say that a good manager is a very valuable asset. Which leads me to another generality. I believe that most business owners would agree that insuring the valuable assets of their business is a prudent idea. And lastly, the loss of a valuable asset can cause a substantial financial loss to the business if it isn’t insured.

I’m not sure an attorney of generalities could have built a better case for a type of business life insurance called key man insurance. The way key man insurance works is that a value is determined that represents the loss to a business if the key person should die. It can be done several ways, but for the sake of this example we will say that the life insurance policy, in this case, a return of premium term insurance policy, is two times the annual premium of the manager. We pay our manager $125,000, so we insure his life for $250,000.

We have determined, in this case, that it would take about two years to hire, train and bring up to speed a new manager. Because our manager is so integral in the success of the business, we anticipate that there would be some turmoil caused by his untimely death. There might be customers lost, production slow downs, employees lost, etc. We might also need to anticipate paying a hiring bonus so we can hire as high up the food chain as possible to minimize the turmoil. Anyway, suffice it to say we can certainly justify the key man policy.

Now to why I decided to buy a return of premium term policy to fund our key man policy. Let’s say that our manager has 15 year to go to retirement when we purchase the policy and, being the good employee that he is, he doesn’t die but keeps on doing a stellar job right up to his retirement day.

During those 15 years we have insured a valuable asset of the business to protect the business. Our manager has made us tons of money and save us hundreds of tons of headaches, because that’s what good managers do. So now it’s time to give him a bonus.

Our return of premium term policy has cost the company $4000 a year for the last 15 years and now, because our manager is still alive and we bought the right kind of life insurance policy, the company gets back all of the premium paid in. Well, that just freed up $60,000 that we can hand to our retiring manager at his going away party. A bonus for a job well done.

If that doesn’t get you all choked up, you could be a manager whose employer bought the wrong kind of term life insurance.

What happens if your business partner wakes up dead today?

Needless to say, these kinds of events can definitely present you with some challenges. Partnerships are tricky enough. Without the right business life insurance or buy/sell life insurance policy in place, the partnership can remain tricky long after the deceased partner is gone.

In general, a business partner’s portion of the business would be passed on to his or her family upon death. This can take place in a few ways.

One scenario is that the spouse or a surviving child of your partner would move into the partner’s old position and continue on kind of like nothing ever happened. A problem can arise if that spouse or child isn’t qualified to do the job, in which case you would probably prefer they weren’t there. A problem can also pop up if their aren’t any family members who want to step in, but they can’t afford to just walk away from the income generated by the half of the partnership they used to enjoy.

A buy/selll life insurance policy, usually a term insurance policy, can alleviate the problem. Each partner would carry an amount of insurance adequate to buy out the other partner’s portion of the business. That would provide the funds necessary to formally purchase the partner’s interest in the business from the deceased partner’s family.

So, what happens if your business partner wakes up dead today? Before that happens, get together with an independent life insurance agent and get some life insurance quotes today. Discuss a binding agreement with an attorney. You’ll be surprised how a little money can defuse a potential time bomb.