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The same health insurance policy can cost you differently at different life stages. We explain why this happens.

Taking life insurance in today’s times of uncertainty is de rigueur for any responsible person. While lifestyle diseases and serious illnesses like cancer are on the rise, the world is also witnessing unprecedented acts of terrorism and natural disasters. All in all, life is quite unsafe all over the world. But while we can exercise no control over how the world behaves and affects us, we can certainly safeguard ourselves and our families with life and health insurance policies.

However, the timing of purchase is crucial: any financial planner and insurance advisor will tell you that the younger you are when you buy life and health insurance plans in India, the lower your premium payments will be. There is a curious correlation between one’s age and how affordable or expensive the insurance plans become. This correlation changes with:

The 20s: A person has a job with a modest income, possibly a first job. The policy holder has relatively lesser family responsibilities and can easily pay the health insurance policy premiums. A person in their 20s is also healthier and fitter than his older counterparts, so the chance of disease is lower. Also, insurers estimate a larger life span for the policy holder, hence the sum assured will be higher while the premium payments will be lower.

The 30s: By this time, a person is married and has a family, while also having a stable job. His income is also higher than in the previous decade, while his health profile may not be as good as earlier. Insurers anticipate that certain lifestyle diseases like diabetes and cardiac problems take root in this decade. Also, your profession and lifestyle can have a bearing on the premiums of your health insurance policy. If you are employed in a line of work that puts you in danger (such as the police force, fire brigade, mining and construction, etc.) the insurer will insist on a higher premium payment for you.

The 40s and 50s: Premiums on health insurance plans will be much higher as compared to those a person in his 20s would pay. Insurers anticipate a lower life expectancy for the customer at this stage, along with many varied expenses at home (children’s higher education, medical treatment costs for self and parents, home mortgage payments, etc.) and so, the premiums will be larger. Insurers will also insist on a detailed health profile to eliminate the possibility of unknown diseases, critical illnesses, disorders arising out of smoking and substance abuse, etc.

The 60s: Most insurers do not give health insurance policies in India to people who have crossed the age of 60 years. People in this age group have retired from active duty, hence they do not have an income from which they can pay their health premiums. Secondly, it is costlier to insure a person past the age of 60 because of a high incidence of poor health and diseases. Instead of taking individual health plans in their 60s, people in this age group should look at getting included in the family health plans of their children.

Picking mutual funds for investment is easier than picking the right time to invest in them. We give you five hints to help you choose.

Every investor knows that in order to make money, he must put the money he currently has to good use. Simply letting the money sit in the bank or investing it in such instruments as real estate and gold do not always yield the best results. Besides, if the investor has both short term and long term goals, he may need to look at mutual fund investment.

But despite wishing to invest in mutual funds in India, many factors can hold an investor back. In terms of mutual funds, ‘how’ is often not as important as ‘when’. Consider these five pointers to help yourself decide when to invest in mutual funds:

1 When you do your research.

You must be willing to put in hours of study on both the fund you are interested in and the fund house. Choosing the best mutual funds cannot be a snap decision, and it cannot be based on the current favourite in the market. The fund you purchase must offer the potential for growth that you seek to realise your short term and long term financial goals. Apart from the fund, you must select the right fund manager as well. Conducting due diligence is the crucial first step to investing in the best mutual funds in India.

2 Study the fund manager’s record over three years.

Investors are often tempted to see short term results of the fund manager they wish to work with. However, experts will tell you that any amount of time short of three years is too less to analyse the manager’s performance. Analyse his track record over three to five years and discuss the various strategies he has adopted over the years vis-à-vis market fluctuations and asset allocation.

3 Choose a manager with the same investment style as yours.

A fund manager is not a magician who can convert your mutual fund investment into piles of money. Nor is he a mathematician who follows provable theorems with predictable outcomes. A fund manager studies the markets and interprets them every day, and bases his decisions on his understanding and skill. The gains may be slow in coming in some cases, while another of his decisions can fetch a windfall. However, his investment style must align with yours, or there may be conflict in reaching your fiscal goals.

4 Pick the fund of the best available ones.

Studying market forces every day and picking the right mutual fund is important for the proper realisation of your financial goals. Most people tend to go with the popular choice, or expect a long term fund to generate constant growth in the short term. Discussing the fund’s growth with your manager regularly, reading reports by financial companies and looking up the workings of the best mutual funds relays valuable information.

5 Be certain that it is the best way to create wealth.

Investing in mutual funds is a matter of faith and being open to a little risk. Sometimes, all calculations can go awry and mutual funds may show extremely low returns. Hence, it is important to be convinced about the decision to invest in a mutual fund. Only when the investor is certain that they will give the best returns will the investor be confident about putting in his money in them.

When creating an overall financial portfolio, investors typically consider how to allocate assets into categories such as growth, income, and cash or cash equivalents. But, often they will tend to forget about something that, without it, could be detrimental to literally everything else that they’ve worked for. That is life insurance.

Life insurance is, in many ways, one of the most essential elements in a financial portfolio. This is because it can provide protection for all of the other assets – especially in the case of the unexpected.

For example, in its most basic sense, life insurance is made to protect a surviving spouse or loved ones from the financial consequences of unpaid debt and / or ongoing living expenses should a primary income earner pass away.

But life insurance can also be used in other financial planning areas, too.

Using Life Insurance for Diversification

In addition to death benefit protection, there are many life insurance policies that will also provide policy holders with a way to protect their cash value from market volatility, as well as from the high cost of a long-term care need.

In other cases, cash value life insurance can also be used as a primary or a secondary financial vehicle for saving for a child’s or a grandchild’s future college education expenses – and oftentimes this can provide a much more flexible mechanism even than the 529 college savings plan.

Life Insurance as an Income Supplement

If structured in the proper manner, certain cash value life insurance policies today can also be set up to help policy holders in supplementing their retirement income on a tax-free basis. With all permanent life insurance policies, cash value is allowed to grow tax-deferred. This means that there are no taxes due on the gain on those funds until the time they are withdrawn.

In many cases, a life insurance policy owner will either borrow or withdraw their cash value for a variety of different needs. These can include paying off loans, funding the college expenses of a child or a grandchild, or even taking a nice vacation.

The money that is taken out as a loan will not be taxed to the policy holder – and, it can typically be borrowed at very low interest rates (usually quite a bit lower than that of a bank or other lender).

Over the past several years, many pre-retirees have been taking advantage of the many benefits that indexed universal life insurance (IUL) can provide. This is because the cash in these policies has the opportunity to increase based on market indexed linked growth, yet it is protected from downward market movements by being credited with a return of 0% in negative periods.

Cash can be borrowed tax-free in order to supplement retirement income – and, if the policy holder passes away, any unpaid loan balance will simply be charged against the death benefit that is paid out to the policy’s beneficiary.

Making Your Financial Plan Complete

In all, while life insurance should still be considered for its death benefit protection, it also has so much more to offer – and because of that, it should not be thought of as just a “stand alone” product, but rather as an important and essential piece of the overall financial planning puzzle.

When constructing your overall financial plan, it’s important to be sure that you have the right type and amount of life insurance coverage. This is because you don’t want to leave your loved ones short just in case of the unexpected.

When choosing your life insurance plan, know that not all policies are the same, so you want to be sure that you shop for the policy, the benefits, and the insurer that will be the best for you and your specific needs and goals.

An independent insurance advisor can help you to fit the coverage to your plan, as versus the other way around. By working with many different life insurance carriers, going with an independent agency will allow you to shop in an unbiased manner while putting all of the pieces together when you’re ready to move forward.

A well thought out marketing strategy is an important component for every business. One of the things to consider when developing a marketing strategy is figuring out which marketing channels to invest in.

 There are many different options, but not all of them make sense for every business. It is; therefore, best to invest in the marketing channels that are most appropriate for your target market. The rise of social media and internet usage has made digital marketing platforms extremely relevant. Here are four marketing channels you should be investing in.

Social media

According to EMarketer, there were over 1.43 billion social media users in 2012. This is a 19% increase from the 2011 figures. It’s obvious that social media usage is rapidly expanding, making it the perfect platform for a well-developed marketing strategy.

It is easy to target the right audience through networks like Facebook, which allow for targeted advertising. Twitter is a great way to share small amounts of information about products with a large number of people. There are also other social media networks; like LinkedIn, Tumblr, FourSquare, that can help market products at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Search engine marketing

Ranking high in search engine results is important as only the highest ranked websites get the most traffic. Search engine marketing includes paid advertisements, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click services. Investing in a new website and search engine marketing (SEM) services is not expensive. Most companies that provide SEM services will help develop the website, and website content for an all-inclusive price as well. SEM is a great way to increase the visibility for your product online, and works well with social media marketing methods as well.

Event marketing

Event marketing allows companies to target more specific groups of people as compared to traditional marketing methods like TV advertisements or billboards. It consists of sample distribution, interactive displays, and visual promotions at events. It is very common for companies to sponsor entire events – Mercedes Benz Fashion Week – which are branded to market a specific product.

You can also see event marketing in action at malls, where free samples are being provided. This means that companies – regardless of their marketing budget – can participate in this marketing channel as it is customizable. It is worth the money since it targets a specific type of customer in a more personal way as compared to other marketing channels.

Trade shows

Trade fairs (trade shows) allows companies to promote their products to a large number of potential consumers in the very short space of time. By having trained staff at the booth, collecting leads and quickly following up on them, it can be very easy to turn these potential consumers into actual buyers. This is one of the best methods for creating a lasting impression on consumers.

There are plenty of marketing channels available, but you should focus on using the ones that deliver the most bang for the buck.

Eva has been helping small businesses to improve their promotions for the last 3 years. Her expertise is in custom promotional merchandise, through her work at Custom Gear, one of Australia’s fastest growing branding companies.

Traditional assets consist of stocks, bonds, or money. Individuals capitalize in such products with the expectation of capital appreciation, surplus on the original investment, and earnings on interest. For many years, people have been limited to financing only these asset products.

Alternative investments have created a broader field for individuals to capitalize in. This type of investment relies upon asset classes that have little to no correlation with more traditional forms of ventures.

Types of Alternate Financing

Private equity: there are a greater number of private corporations than there are public ones. These private companies tend to take on investor capital. Private equity firms are essentially ones that raise the necessary funds from a variety of investors. These resources will then be placed with favorable private corporations. The money is then returned to investors once an IPO or acquisition has taken place.

Venture capital: this is a division of private equity. Here the investment takes place among companies that are just beginning, before they have had a chance to grow. Venture capital firms gather funds from various groups. They then disperse these reserves to a variety of companies that are just starting out. This type of financing is usually more of a gamble. In the event that these start-up corporations succeed, however, the investors can expect an impressive return of their capital.

Hedge funds: these funds consist of a compilation of several investments. These are then placed in a variety of schemes and assets. The difference between hedge funds and private equity is that hedge funds will also place ventures with public companies. There is also more liquidity offered with hedge funds. This way investors have more access to their money and can withdraw it with greater ease. Some of the more typical hedge fund strategies are distressed investments, arbitrage, and macro-trends.

Advantages of Alternate Financing

The inclusion of alternative financing asset classes in a portfolio will greatly increase its diversification. This is because they have very little or no association with more traditional asset classes such as stocks. This means that your investments are less likely to be affected by the performance of the stock market. Thus, the inclusion of this type of investment reduces the overall volatility of the portfolio.

Alternatively, this type of investment has a good correlation with inflation. This property ensures that it serves well as a hedge against inflation. This indicates that it would provide a solid return rate on a long-term investment.

In certain instances, alternate investments can actually produce greater returns than traditional investment. One of the advantages afforded to this non-traditional form of investment is the wider range of financing opportunities. The investors can choose to invest in both public and private corporations. They also face less constraints and are subject to fewer regulations. This can result in better returns subsequent to long-term performances.

Typically, these types of investments have always been considered more of a risk than stocks, bonds, or cash. It is, however, this increased gamble that can ensure that the return against the venture is also impressive.