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Your life insurance monthly premium can start looking less and less appealing once you've retired. It's a scenario Dan Simon, a retirement planning adviser with Daniel A. White & Associates in Middletown, Del., has seen quite often, even with his own parents. "The cost of the insurance had risen to the point where it was getting unaffordable. They were wondering do we really need to keep this coverage now that the kids are all grown up?"
If you stop paying your premiums, you lose your life insurance coverage, and your heirs wouldn't get anything back for what you've paid in. If you cancel a policy that has cash value, a reserve of money built up in some types of life insurance, the insurer sends you a check for that amount, though it will be far less than the listed death benefit.
Over the past 20 years, a third option went mainstream: selling your policy to a company, a practice known as a life settlement, with the buyer getting the death benefit when you die.
SEE MORE Don't Fall for That Life Insurance Ad on TV
"It's kind of morbid when you think about it. A group buys boatloads of policies from people that have fallen on hard times and can no longer afford their insurance," profiting from the seller's death, says Simon. "In theory, they want you to die tomorrow. If you live another 20 years, it's a bad investment for them."
Selling a life insurance policy generally isn't a great deal for you either, and there are better alternatives worth exploring. Simon finds that people typically turn to selling a policy when they're desperate. Usually, it's because they've spent down their other retirement assets, or they might be dealing with high medical bills. "It's a measure of last resort, like taking a reverse mortgage. I rarely see them working out well for people, and they could en
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There's no way to sugarcoat this: Small and midsize businesses should be scared to death about the consequences of the Inflation Reduction Act. Unless they provide goods and services to the green energy industry, the law's unforeseen consequences could increase their operating expenses in two ways. Here's what to expect — and how to prepare.
SEE MORE Audit-Proof Your Small Business
The Inflation Reduction Act is essentially a climate change law with some health care benefits. While the new legislation doesn't include any direct tax increases on small and midsize businesses, some of its provisions have the potential to raise costs for these companies significantly.
First Reason Why Cost of Business Could Be Going Up
For one, your chances of being audited may be going up. The new bill substantially expands the Internal Revenue Service's budget: More than half of the $80 billion increase in the IRS budget over 10 years will be used to beef up enforcement through new technology and new hires. That means more audits for companies that are the least able to financially manage them. I worry for businesses that gross $5 million or less since they usually don't have excess funds to pay a lawyer $50,000 to fight the IRS if their matter proceeds to court.
In a letter to the Senate, the agency's commissioner said, "These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans." Even so, with the hire of new auditors, it's likely that people with little or
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