CBS News
3 smart life insurance moves seniors should make right now
Yuri Arcurs peopleimages.com/Getty Images
When making careful financial considerations, timing plays a key role. This is especially true for insurance protections, whose benefits are heavily dependent on when a policy is purchased. If you buy in too early, you could risk paying for insurance you can’t use and don’t need. But, if you wait too long, you could wind up losing out on vital financial protection. The timing needs to be just right for each individual.
This importance takes on added weight for seniors, some of whom may be reliant on a limited budget made up of retirement funds and Social Security. With less money to work with, each insurance policy purchased needs to be valuable and cost-effective. And while life insurance is one of the best ways to protect your estate and loved ones in your absence, there are some smart moves to consider making now.
With inflation still high and the prospect of interest rate cuts dim right now, seniors need to consider making select moves. Below, we’ll break down three of the best ones to make.
See how much a robust life insurance policy could cost you here.
3 smart life insurance moves seniors should make now
Here are three strategic life insurance moves seniors should strongly consider right now.
Re-evaluate your needs
Unfortunately, inflation remains an issue for millions of Americans. While significantly cooled from a decades-high in June 2022, it has steadily risen again this year. This has caused the cost of many items to remain high — and it has left interest rates stuck at their highest point in 23 years, thus causing borrowing costs to remain high as well.
With these issues in mind, it’s important to re-evaluate your financial needs. Do you have enough coverage or do you need to boost your protections? Do you want to add beneficiaries or readjust who your money will eventually go to? And will your current policy be enough to pay for any outstanding debts you ultimately leave?
You may have purchased a policy in a very different economic climate than today’s. So, re-evaluate your needs and adjust your life insurance accordingly.
Consider term versus whole
Term and whole life insurance policies both offer unique benefits for policyholders. But if you’re looking for the most cost-effective option (albeit without the opportunity to cash in a policy while alive), then consider a term policy right now. These policies are relatively inexpensive (depending on your applicant profile you could pay less than $100 per month for a six-figure coverage amount) and they can still adequately cover many of the items you’d need.
If you don’t already have a policy but know you’ll need one now, then a term one may be your best option.
Think about your beneficiaries
If inflation and higher borrowing costs have negatively impacted your financial situation, then it makes sense to consider how they have affected your beneficiaries, as well. The coverage amount you initially had planned for your loved ones may be insufficient now that the cost of living has risen so significantly.
With interest rates on some borrowing products more than double what they were a few years ago, a six-figure sum may not go nearly as far as you once expected it would. It may be worth sitting down with your beneficiaries, then, to adjust your policy plans.
The bottom line
Life insurance provides vital financial protection for you and your loved ones. However, the benefits of a policy can easily be influenced by factors outside of your control. In the face of stubborn inflation and elevated borrowing costs, seniors should take a closer look at their current policies (or consider buying one now to help loved ones). They should also consider the benefits of term versus whole policies and discuss their plans with beneficiaries to ensure that the policy they’re paying for now will be valuable when accessed in the future.
Have more questions? Speak to a life insurance expert who can help here today.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
A joint federal intelligence bulletin obtained by CBS News warns of potential violent extremism and hate crimes committed in response to the one-year mark of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the militant group Hamas and the resulting conflict in Gaza.
The bulletin, authored by FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center, was first disseminated by federal law enforcement to local law enforcement partners late Wednesday.
The agencies found that the one-year mark of the attack “as well as any further significant escalations” in the Israel-Hamas war “may be a motivating factor for violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators to engage in violence or threaten public safety,” the bulletin read.
The bulletin provided several recent examples of such threats, including the Sept. 6 arrest of a Pakistani national by Canadian authorities who was accused of planning a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York City.
The bulletin also comes as tensions have continued to ramp up in the Middle East. Following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut last week which killed longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Iran on Tuesday responded with a missile salvo on Israel, launching nearly 200 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense systems. Hamas and Hezbollah are both proxies of Iran.
Israel also began limited ground operations in southern Lebanon this week.
Following Iran’s missile attack, a senior DHS official told CBS News during a briefing Wednesday, “I don’t know that we’ve got a crystal clear assessment on that at this point. We are literally in the earliest days of trying to understand what exactly Iranian intentions might be. We do, though, assess that Iran has a global capacity and a global capability, that it can draw, that it can target U.S. interests around the world – that it certainly has the reach and capacity to do, to carry out, to engage with individuals here inside the United States in ways that present potential threat to the United States, here in the homeland.”
The official added that this is an area of “near daily engagement” between DHS, FBI and other law enforcement partners.
Iran has been involved in “a variety of other efforts in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” the official noted, including “putting out fabricated material to try to increase people’s anger about the post-Oct. 7 situation.”
The bulletin cautioned that “the expansion of the conflict further into the region could serve as motivation for violence against Jewish, Israeli, or American targets in retaliation for civilian deaths, and we cannot preclude the possibility that threat actors in the United States will react with violence to the death” of Nasrallah.
Intelligence analysts revealed in the bulletin that the Oct. 7 attack and Israel-Hamas war “have been cited as sociopolitical grievances influencing some individuals mobilization to violence in the United States,” adding that “hate crimes surged shortly following the attacks and have decreased over the past several months to levels consistent with reporting prior to the conflict, a trend that mirrors hate crimes following previous international conflicts or events.”
In the immediate months after Oct. 7, reports of antisemitic incidents surged in the U.S. The Anti-Defamation League said it recorded 2,031 antisemitic incidents nationwide between Oct. 7 and Dec. 7 of 2023, a 337% increase compared with the same period in 2022.
“Over the past year, we have observed violent extremist activity and hate crimes in the United States linked to the conflict,” the bulletin read. “Jewish, Muslim, or Arab institutions, including synagogues, mosques, and community centers, and large public gatherings, such as memorials, vigils, or other demonstrations, present attractive targets for violent attacks or for hoax threats by a variety of threat actors, including homegrown violent extremists, domestic violent extremists, and hate crime perpetrators who may view the anniversary as an opportunity to conduct an attack or other high-profile, illegal activity.”
The bulletin also warns that foreign terrorist organizations have created media that compares the Oct. 7 and 9/11 attacks and encourages “lone attackers to use simple tactics like firearms, knives, Molotov cocktails, and vehicle ramming against Western targets in retaliation for deaths in Gaza. Individuals inspired by this online messaging could act alone to commit an attack with little to no warning.”
At his first campaign stop since the vice presidential debate, Tim Walz sought to clarify comments he has made about his travel to China and Hong Kong in 1989 as bloody pro-democracy protests took place.
Walz admitted during the debate that he had previously misspoken in 2014 when he said he was in mainland China between April and June 1989, during the Tiananmen Square protests, which took place between April 15 and June 4 of that year. After that concession, however, Walz repeated the mistatement, saying, “So, I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protests, went in, and from that I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
Butan Alliance Times-Herald news report from May 1989 shows then-Staff Sgt. Walz was in the U.S. and toured a Nebraska Army National Guard armory. A news radio station also reported in another Nebraska newspaper in August 1989 that Walz said he would “leave Sunday en route to China,” which was after the protests.
Responding to a question about his remarks from CBS News in Middleville, Pennsylvania, Walz corrected himself and admitted he had his dates wrong, adding that he needs to be clearer when he speaks.
“So, my clarity, to take away from the message, is something I want to be very clear — August of ’89 into Hong Kong, into China,” said the Minnesota governor, who often talks fast and in shorthand.
Walz also clarified a verbal misstatement from the debate, when he said he was friends with school shooters. The moment was quickly seized upon by Republicans and former President Donald Trump, who posted on Truth Social about it.
Walz, a former teacher and football coach, said that although he misspoke, it is “pretty damn clear” that he has stood with school shooting victims and passed legislation in an effort to curb such violence.
In the same conversation at the debate on Tuesday night, Walz mentioned that his teenage son, Gus, was a witness to a shooting. On the campaign trail, Walz often says that even though he supports the Second Amendment, he doesn’t think that should allow children to be shot dead in the hallways.
Walz’s rally Wednesday in York, Pennsylvania, was filled with supporters who defended him.
“Who can remember where they were 30 years ago?” Joan Nagy, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania asked.
“Anybody can make a mistake,” Les Ford said, adding, “When’s the last time you heard Donald Trump or his running mate correct themselves?”
After rolling into the rally on the Harris-Walz campaign bus to address a crowd of around 2,000, Walz leaned in further on his debate performance.
“Anybody watch the debate last night? Not bad for a football coach, huh?,” he quipped.
“Now, look, there is a reason Mike Pence was not on that stage with me,” he said. Walz added, “I served with Mike Pence in Congress. We disagreed on most issues, but in Congress and as a vice president, I never criticized Mike Pence’s ethics and commitment to this country, Walz said. “And he made the decision for the Constitution. Mike Pence did his duty. He honored his oath, and he chose the Constitution over Donald Trump,” Walz said.
“Senator Vance made it clear he will always make a different choice than Mike Pence made,” Walz said, referring to Pence’s refusal to give in to pressure by Trump to not certify the 2020 presidential election. Vance has said that he wouldn’t have certified the election, as Pence had, which Walz said “should be absolutely disqualifying if you’re asking to be the vice president of the United States.”
During their debate, “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell noted that Vance has said he wouldn’t have certified the last presidential election and would have asked the states to submit alternative electors, and she asked, “Would you again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every governor certifies the results?”
Vance did not directly answer, saying only, “What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020 and my own belief is we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square.”
