How exactly does a whole life insurance policy work? Whole life policies are popular with some select groups of people but they are a little bit more complex than their plain vanilla easy to understand term life insurance counterparts.The business of insurance has to be one of the most underrated services offered in the United States nowadays. Not many people think having life insurance is important and because of this we see that the industry is not as successful as the auto and homeowners insurance business. It is important to know however, that death comes at any age; and if a person wants to protect their family or other people after their death it is imperative for them to purchase a life insurance policy.There are two basic types of life insurance in the United States that work in completely different ways and because of this have different premiums. One of these types of insurances is one that is called a temporary policy. This policy covers a policyholder for about 5 to 30 years and their premiums are most of the time stagnant. On the other hand we have the permanent policy in which members are covered for life as long as they pay all their premiums. Part of your premium will go toward a little saving portion of the policy that will accumulate over time and the other portion of the premium goes towards the insurance cost of the death benefit.Whole life insurance is one of the three types of insurance polices that you can obtain if you want a permanent life insurance policy. This means that whole life will cover you for life and that your cash value (saving portion) will get higher as time goes by. However, whole life is different in that your cash value is tax deferred until the beneficiary withdraws it and you can also borrow against it.A person should consider whole life insurance when the need for coverage is lifelong. Whole life may be used as part of your estate planning because it accrues money after a person pays the premiums, as mentioned before. Because premiums for this type of policy are much higher than those of temporary policies, a person must know that this is what they want after all. Whole life is a good choice if you want to make sure that your family or dependents have a good life after your death, and that the transition from the death of a person close to their lives is a close one.Within the whole life realm, there are six different kinds that a person can choose from.1. Non-Participating Whole Life Insurance: This type of whole life policy has a leveled premium and a face amount through the entire policyholder’s life. Since the policy has fixed costs the premiums will not be necessary high, but it will no pay you any dividends after the policyholder dies.2. Participating Whole Life Insurance: This type is much different from the first type mentioned. One of its differences is that this one does pay dividends and because of this premiums can be said to be a little bit more expensive. These dividends can be used to reduce your premium payments because they can be paid in cash, they can be left to accumulate at a specified rate of interest or they can be used to purchase additional insurance which in turn will increase the value in cash that a beneficiary will receive after a policyholder’s death.3. Level Premium Whole Life Insurance: This kind of insurance is one that has the same premiums with no significant drop or rise in the money paid monthly through the entire life of the policy. At first the premiums will be enough to cover the services given and a little portion of it can be put away to cover the premiums that will come in later years when the cost of insurance in the market rises. The insurer can also pay extra premiums that will go toward the cash value part of the policy one the policyholder dies.4. Limited Payment Whole Life Insurance: This is the type of policy that will allow you to only pay premiums over a specified period of time. This means that if you only want to pay premiums for about twenty to thirty years or up until age 65 or 85; this is the type of policy that you want. Because premium payments are going to be paid over a specified period of time, your premium payments will be significantly higher, but after you get done with them you will be covered for life.5. Single Premium Whole Life Insurance: This type of policy is one that is very common for people that select the whole life insurance type. This is a limited policy with a single relatively large premium due at issue. Due to the fact that the owner of the policy will pay the single premium payments when the policy is first signed, the life insurance policy will immediately have cash and loan value! This type of whole term life insurance is mostly an investment oriented type than some of the others.6. Indeterminate Premium Whole Life Insurance: This is the easiest type of whole life policy to understand and also one of the most common ones in the life market. With this insurance the company will give you a premium based on how the company is doing economically and on expense costs. This means that while one year the premiums can be slightly lower than expected, in the next the company can charge more if they are not doing up to expectations. It is also good to note that there is a maximum guaranteed premium when you first sign your policy and that the life insurance company can never charge above the premium statedWhile the cost of whole life coverage is substantially higher than a term life policy with the same death benefit it is important to keep in mind that the reason for the difference in price is that the death benefit for the whole life policy will almost certainly be paid out – after all everyone dies sometime! With the term policy of course the insurance company is counting on not paying the death benefit out on over 90% of the policies it issues.The issue of life insurance should not be taken lightly if one has a family or dependents. While some people in the United States are fed up paying all the different kinds of insurances and they figure that they don’t need to pay extra for life insurance when they are young, it is important to understand that life insurance can be a life saver after a family member, husband or parent dies.Whole life insurance covers you for life and it will allow a beneficiary to continue life only having to cope with the issue of death and not having to worry about the economic hits that come with it. Life insurance policies are a must for anyone that has someone that relies on them for support and it’s time for all responsible Americans to realize that.
How Does a Whole Life Insurance Policy Work?
Back Pain on the Job
In times of economic recession, lay-offs and unemployment leave people desperate for anything they can find. Many people have lost their desk jobs and are moving out of the office in search of anyone hiring. Besides the federal government, Walmart is the largest employer in the U.S. with almost 2 million employees.As anyone who has worked either in a chair or on their feet all day can tell you, back pain is a common occurrence, especially lower back pain. People who work for Walmart, especially those who are stationary most of the day, like cashiers, are highly susceptible to both upper and lower back pain.Poor posture is one of the leading causes of back pain in the retail industry. Posture is not merely a matter of remembering to sit and stand up straight; maintaining spinal alignment throughout the day requires conditioned core muscles.Another factor of back pain for those employed by Walmart and similar companies is immobility. A lack of movement limits blood flow to your muscles, causing rigidity and soreness.PostureSupporting the weight of the upper body is a chore; the spine is meant to receive the assistance of muscles in the lower back, stomach, pelvis and buttocks to support this weight. In this culture of sitting, however, many people do not have a strong core group. This leaves the spine without the support it needs to maintain alignment, and places the burden of the upper body’s weight almost exclusively on the lower back muscles.The most common type of poor posture includes stooped shoulders, the pelvis jutted forward, lumbar arch nearly flattened, and head craned forward. With the change in spinal alignment, the discs that cushion vertebrae receive uneven pressure, which can eventually lead to damage. Muscles from the lower back up to the neck are strained, creating both upper and lower back pain. Posture-related strains tend to be chronic, unless steps are taken to correct posture by developing the core muscles and using ergonomics for assistance if necessary.Stationary PositionAn eight-hour shift as a cashier entails nearly eight hours of standing. While state laws vary, employers generally give employees two 10-15 minute breaks and one 30-60 minute lunch break during an eight-hour shift. Since the lunch break is generally not considered work time, the actual working shift is about 7.5 hours. Standing behind a register for 7.5 hours a day, employees do not have many opportunities to move around and get the blood flowing.The contraction and relaxation cycle of muscles pumps oxygen-rich blood in and out. When muscles are held in contraction for a prolonged period of time, as when standing in one place for hours (particularly with bad posture), fresh blood is not being pumped through the immobile muscles. When muscles contract, they use oxygen to convert glucose into energy that enables them to do work. In the absence of oxygen, waste is produced. Fresh blood flow is needed to flush these waste products out of the muscle; without this flow, the waste pools in muscles, leaving them rigid and sore.TreatmentIf you are just beginning a job at Walmart or a similar company, you may be able to prevent back pain or stop it early on your own; developing the core muscle group and finding creative ways to move around at work may suffice.The Mayo Clinic offers a slideshow of core exercises that will leave your muscles balanced and strong; find it at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/core-strength/SM00047. These exercises especially help to relieve lower back pain.For ideas on how to keep the blood flowing at work, see http://www.rsiguard.com/help/ErgoAnswers/micro_stretch.html. Try out a few of these standing stretches between customers. Your back, neck and shoulders will likely benefit.If posture and immobility have wreaked havoc on your back for some time now, it would be wise to seek consult with a physical therapist. Chronic muscle strain leads to muscle imbalances that wrench the spine further out of alignment and exacerbate pain. A physical therapist can help you identify which muscles need relaxing and which need developing. After balance has been achieved, your muscles will need to be retrained to support correct posture; this will help you prevent further cases of upper and lower back pain.In nearly every situation of back pain, education can lead you to a solution. Work should not be painful. Make sure you know the risks and how to avoid them.
Still Using Spreadsheets for Managing Risks? – Switch to Risk Management Software
Managing risk is essential in every organization to accomplish its key objectives effectively. Risk management not only requires a reliable process to capture risks, but also needs a mechanism to document and administer the organization’s response.An appropriate risk management tool always helps the risk managers to identify, assess, and prioritize the risks which can be prevented. Here, we will discuss about spreadsheets – commonly used risk management tools and their true costs. We will also know about the best tool to replace spreadsheets for effective risk management.Spreadsheets are commonly used management tools because they are
• Convenient to use: Many people believe that spreadsheets are convenient to collect, code, sort and analyze data. Yes, they are better than paper based management systems, but they are risky.• Flexible to enter data: With some basic encoding, spreadsheets offer flexible arrangements of rows and columns to enter data. They allow the user to configure and enter information in a way that suits his unique needs. But risk management involves analysis of various factors and a spreadsheet may not be helpful.• Low cost or free option: Spreadsheets are either available as freeware or at low-cost. That is why organizations use them extensively. But they fail to understand the fact that the true cost of a tool should be defined by the operational costs that affect the business on long-run; not by the initial cost of the tool.Are they really beneficial?
Many business owners and risk managers today are using spreadsheets as risk management tools unaware of the risks involved (however some are aware). Here are the risks involved:• Inability to process huge amounts of data: Although spreadsheets are a good solution for small volumes of data, the processing and calculation will become complicated with the continual growth.• Time consuming: Risk management requires collecting great deal of information, which often results in huge number of spreadsheets interlinked to each other. A little change to the data structure becomes a great task. This makes risk managers spend countless hours validating data, double checking formulas, and updating values, which is as a time-consuming process.• Complex to find mistakes: It is quite difficult to find mistakes in a spreadsheet with lot of data. It is often time consuming process to find where exactly the mistakes have occurred.• Limits the depth of risk analysis: With each change made to a spreadsheet, links between the information are lost making it difficult to analyze relationships over time. Without these links, it becomes tough to link risks and their controls. Also they offer limited access to past and current data making it difficult to compare data overtime.• Intensive labor: The process of risk management involves continuous updating of data and it increases day by day. Updating data and using spreadsheets effectively requires lot of time and effort. So intensive labor with good knowledge of using the shortcuts and formulas is compulsory.• Lacks security: A user can accidentally or intentionally delete vast amounts of critical information. Spreadsheets are highly vulnerable to virus attacks, hard disk crashes, and other unexpected disasters.Underlying costs of using spreadsheets
In general, people think that spreadsheets are free, but they never calculate the underlying costs that can impact the business. Following are the true costs of using them.• Labor costs: As discussed earlier, it takes lot of effort to create, maintain, organize, and report using spreadsheets. However, the fact that these things require labor, which in turn results in huge costs to the company, is often ignored.• Opportunity costs: Spreadsheets consume lot of your time and effort, which you can productively use for adding value to the organization. Many business owners, in fact, lose many opportunities hanging around with spreadsheets.• Risk and non-compliance costs: Spreadsheets lack in company wide visibility, accountability, security and control which results in increased costs in terms of failed audits, unforeseen events, increased insurance costs and so on.• Scalability costs: A small company can manage and use one spreadsheet to track all records. But as the business grows, the effort of maintaining and consolidating these records increases exponentially. At one point this process fails and negatively impacts the business.• Human error costs: Spreadsheets are vulnerable to manipulation, which can dramatically impact the company. Moreover, with the increasing chances of human errors, it is difficult to consider that the data is valid and reliable. These human errors can cost a lot to the company.Effective tool to replace spreadsheet – Risk Management Software
After seeing all the risks and costs involved with spreadsheets, one would certainly ask for a better tool to manage risks and here is the solution – the Risk Management Software. It can effectively replace spreadsheets in the risk management process. Following are the benefits of using risk management software.• Effective control over GRC processes: Risk management software helps in the effective control over the GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) processes with proper documentation and work flow. They also help managers in risk assessment and analysis, visualization and reporting.• Data security: User can limit the availability of data by creating passwords. He can also give full access to all the data to a particular group of people within the organization. This feature eliminates the risk of manipulation of data.• Real time recording: Recording and updating information regarding risks is easy using this software. You need not spend hours to update the data.• Reliable audits: This software offers full protection to all the data in the system with fully automated backups. This allows auditors to extract robust and reliable audit trails without unnecessary effort and thus it helps them in identification of risks, and creation of risk management strategies.• Automated risk reporting: It provides the user with clear information on their objectives and risks associated. It also informs about the required actions and scheduled dates to implement them to prevent risks.• Clear and consistent reports: A unique feature of this software is that it provides clear and consistent reports making it easy for managers to view the risks in real-time.How to choose effective risk management software
With growing demand of the risk management software, many companies offering this software evolved in the market. Therefore it is important to choose the effective one to reap the maximum benefits. Following are some tips to choose a good one.• Reputed vendor: A well established and experienced vendor definitely offers standard products as he fully understands risk management standards.• Maximum features: Before buying the product, make sure that it has all features to help you in managing the risks properly.• Customer service and tech support: As this product is new for the organization, it is important to choose a company that offers 24/7 tech support and timely customer service. Moreover, as risk environment demands a constant change of compliance, make sure that the vendor is offering regular product updates and maintenance releases.An upgrade in the existing technology never says that the existing product is of no use, instead offers the user with more useful features. Upgrading to latest tools like risk management software enhances the organization’s capabilities in managing risk.