Insurance is something that I have always kind of taken for granted. It was either something I didn’t know about, need, or something that I had because of a job but never saw it’s benefit.
Recently with the death of a friend I decided to start taking advantage of the insurance I have with my job, for probably the second time in my life. As before navigating insurance isn’t exactly something intuitive or easy to understand and pick up. Fortunately with much of the learning I’ve been doing recently, insurance has been something that many sources highly recommend getting situated. So I have been learning and trying to apply. As I state below, insurance is a way to take a burdensome or heavy financial obligation off of your shoulders (in the future) and put it onto an insurance companies shoulders so that they can do the bulk of work in those rare situations where tragedy happens like a car accident.
Some insurance we are required to have, depending on where we live. Especially with those types of insurance it’s best to know what your coverage is so that you can use it if necessary. Do not just pay companies money for no reason, let’s know what we’re paying for, why, and utilize it to make our lives easier. A little bit of money put towards an insurance premium monthly can save us thousands of dollars in last minute and emergency situations. But as with any business their goal is not our best interest so we must look out for ourselves.
With that said below are some of the terms and phrases that I believe are important for insurance lay-people like myself.
If you click the term it will open a new tab that will take you a resource for a more in depth explanation and definition.
| Term | Brief definition |
| Annuity | Annuities are insurance contracts for retirement which pay out consistently for a period of time or for the remainder of a person’s life. Annuities help offset savings account and retirement fund shortfalls. |
| Beneficiary | A beneficiary is someone who gains an advantage, profits from, or benefits from something such as an insurance policy, a trust, or a will. The benefit is usually money. |
| Bodily Injury | With insurance plans Bodily Injury is physical injury a person including sickness or disease. |
| Convertible Term-Life insurance | Convertible Term Insurance Policies are Term-Life insurance policies that can be converted into Permanent Life Insurance policies. Insurers are required to renew the policy regardless of the health of the policy holder with some stipulations of course. |
| Death benefits | Death Benefits are the payouts received by a beneficiary of a life insurance policy or retirement account. The beneficiary will need to provide proof of death as well as proof of the deceased persons coverage. They can be staggered payments although typically they are lump sums. |
| Insurance | Insurance is a way to shift the burden of actualized (in other words real) risk from you to an entity such as a company. It allows you to have less concern and more peace of mind, while the company does most of the financial heavy lifting when some loss comes crashing into your life. Insurance is primarily for known risks and losses that cannot be avoided, although many types of insurance exist for other reasons. |
| Insurance floater | An Insurance Floater is basically designed to keep an item or collection of like items covered beyond what a normal or standard home insurance policy covers. For instance, many home insurance policies cover jewerly and other small items up to $1500. If you have $3k worth of jewelery in your house then you would probably consider an insurance floater to cover all of your jewelery in case of theft or other loss. You can cover things like art, firearms, a/v equipment, music collections, etc. |
| Insurance Rider | An Insurance Rider is a change or an amendment to a insurance policy. Some examples would be an Assisted Living Care Rider, Dental Coverage Rider, Living Benefits Rider. Typically, they are coverage over and above whatever policy you have agreed to. |
| Permanent Life Insurance | A Permanent Life Insurance plan has no term or ending period it is a plan that remains active as long as the premiums are paid up until the insureds death. |
| Policy Holder | Policy Holders are the people who own or control an insurance policy, and in most cases, they are also the Insured person on that policy. An instance where that would not be the case is when the Policy Holder is a parent and the Insured is a child under legal age. |
| Premiums | When dealing with insurance a Premium is the amount of money that is paid monthly to keep your insurance coverage active. |
| Term-life Insurance | Term Life Insurance differs from Permanent Life Insurance in time, because a term-length is chosen and death is only covered within that length of time. As opposed to permanent life insurance that covers a person for their entire life. |
| Under-insured motorist | Underinsured Motorist Coverage is for when the at fault motorist is underinsured. For the insured party, Under-insured Motorist Coverage will cover bodily injury and property losses that the underinsured motorists insurance will not cover. |
| Underwrite | Underwriting is the process an insurance company goes through when examining risk of an individual, classification, and determining the appropriate rate for the premium. |
| Uninsured motorist | Uninsured Motorist Coverage is an add-on to auto insurance policies that helps provide coverage for when you get into an accident with someone who has no insurance. |
Outer (Social)Space 