Hello! I am seeking advice regarding possibly tapping into my life insurance due to my terminal illness.
I am a DIY boglehead who typically manages our finances by myself. However, in recent years my being diagnosed with a terminal illness has prompted me to need professional advice a couple of times. Last year, I paid an advisor by the hour to sanity check my planning when we overhauled our lives by moving to a lower cost area and my moving onto disability. Now, it has come to my attention that my terminal illness opens up the potential ability to tap into the life insurance that I bought before my diagnosis, which fortunately is very good. However, it looks to be a fairly complicated, niche, and esoteric space, and not one I feel comfortable navigating by myself. First there is the question of what options are available to me, which may include accelerated death benefits, life settlements, loans against the policy, or viatical settlements. And then there are the tax implications (I do have a tax accountant, so presumably she could help me on that.) And then there is the question of whether it is wise for me to take advantage of any of these options, or leave the policy be. I feel like what I want to do is pay someone who is an expert in the space to give me objective, unbiased, detailed, personalized and confidential advice, based on a review of my policies, our overall financial situation, and their expertise of this area of insurance. It might be helpful for this person to be in the state where I am located, which is North Carolina, since I think some of this may be regulated at the state level.
My question for all of you is, what professional should I be seeking out to give me this type of advice? Should I find a general financial advisor, or is this too much of a niche issue, so that I really want someone who specializes in this corner of life insurance? Is that even a thing? For whatever it’s worth, most of our money is at Vanguard, Fidelity, and Merrill edge/Bank of America, and we are planning to consolidate at Merrill edge/Bank of America for simplicity,
so those are the institutions that may have an incentive to hook me up with some advice (although I am not sure about that since I always eschew their attempts to funnel me into high priced advisors who charge a percentage of assets). But I’m not even sure if the type of professional I’m looking for would be at those sorts of institutions.
Who would you look to for advice on this? Thank you!
I am a DIY boglehead who typically manages our finances by myself. However, in recent years my being diagnosed with a terminal illness has prompted me to need professional advice a couple of times. Last year, I paid an advisor by the hour to sanity check my planning when we overhauled our lives by moving to a lower cost area and my moving onto disability. Now, it has come to my attention that my terminal illness opens up the potential ability to tap into the life insurance that I bought before my diagnosis, which fortunately is very good. However, it looks to be a fairly complicated, niche, and esoteric space, and not one I feel comfortable navigating by myself. First there is the question of what options are available to me, which may include accelerated death benefits, life settlements, loans against the policy, or viatical settlements. And then there are the tax implications (I do have a tax accountant, so presumably she could help me on that.) And then there is the question of whether it is wise for me to take advantage of any of these options, or leave the policy be. I feel like what I want to do is pay someone who is an expert in the space to give me objective, unbiased, detailed, personalized and confidential advice, based on a review of my policies, our overall financial situation, and their expertise of this area of insurance. It might be helpful for this person to be in the state where I am located, which is North Carolina, since I think some of this may be regulated at the state level.
My question for all of you is, what professional should I be seeking out to give me this type of advice? Should I find a general financial advisor, or is this too much of a niche issue, so that I really want someone who specializes in this corner of life insurance? Is that even a thing? For whatever it’s worth, most of our money is at Vanguard, Fidelity, and Merrill edge/Bank of America, and we are planning to consolidate at Merrill edge/Bank of America for simplicity,
so those are the institutions that may have an incentive to hook me up with some advice (although I am not sure about that since I always eschew their attempts to funnel me into high priced advisors who charge a percentage of assets). But I’m not even sure if the type of professional I’m looking for would be at those sorts of institutions.
Who would you look to for advice on this? Thank you!
Statistics: Posted by DIYDad — Sat Jun 01, 2024 2:14 pm — Replies 1 — Views 158