Poll of the Day > I just had to cancel my life insurance policy and holy crap it was painful.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Via State Farm.

The only way to do it is to call your agent and listen to him desperately trying to upsell you the very thing you have already decided you don't want any more.

Jesus, I am not the best socially but if I had horrible social anxiety I feel like I'd be paying $20 a month forever despite the fact I get free life insurance from my job now.

"If you wanted, you could come in for about fifteen minutes and we can go over your options"

"No thanks, I've heard what you said, but I still want to cancel"

The thing I don't know if this guy understands is, if I'm dead, I won't be around to care about how much money my beneficiary gets. I want them to get something, surely, which is why I paid for a plan. But now thats it is free, I don't care it offers less money. It's free. Beneficiary still gets something and I pay literally nothing.

That's pretty much any ongoing service.

I remember having to take like 10 minutes to cancel NetZero when I used it years ago, because they keep trying to talk you into not leaving.
---

You should have kept it, especially if it was only $20 a month.

---

You couldn't possibly think, after telling my agent no, that I am going to listen to somebody elses perspective on why I should keep it? Right? Or...what are we doing here?

argonautweakend posted...

You couldn't possibly think, after telling my agent no, that I am going to listen to somebody elses perspective on why I should keep it? Right? Or...what are we doing here?

That work policy won't continue after you stop working there. Do you plan on working there until death?

---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That's pretty much any ongoing service.

I remember having to take like 10 minutes to cancel NetZero when I used it years ago, because they keep trying to talk you into not leaving.

I have had some services (Garbage Disposal) where they literally wouldn't let me cancel. I called them 3 times, spent 10 minutes going back and fourth, only to have them hang up on me. Ended up having to remove automatic billing, ignore all their "late payment" notices, have them cancel my service and send my bill to collections, then pay off the debt collector the moment they called me. When I payed it off, I think I put something like "Fuck <name of company>". on the memo of the check just to give the debt collector a good laugh when they processed my payment.

---

your job gives you life insurance?

damn.

---

If you break the 4th wall and tell them you're not going to accept any upsell or variation on the package, they'll usually shut up.

---

Many many years ago I worked at a life insurance company handling sales complaints and it did not leave me with the best of opinions regarding insurance agents.

It is unbelieve the kinds of things agents and sales managers would do to try to keep people from cancelling their policies.

SunWuKung420 posted...

That work policy won't continue after you stop working there. Do you plan on working there until death?

That's what I was thinking also. Depending on how old you are, whenever you stop working at that job, the next time you try to get your own insurance it may cost more than the $1k or so you may have spent keeping the original coverage active. It sounds like you already considered that though.

---

Well and there is also the factor that his old life insurance company is now going to send hitmen after him in retribution.

---

Considering that you're single with no dependents, there was no reason to have life insurance in the first place. That's really for people with a spouse/dependents. But if you're getting it for free through your current job, there's no reason not to take it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That's pretty much any ongoing service.

I remember having to take like 10 minutes to cancel NetZero when I used it years ago, because they keep trying to talk you into not leaving.

Alternatively you can just stop paying it and they cancel you very quickly.

SunWuKung420 posted...

You should have kept it, especially if it was only $20 a month.

For what possible reason?

SunWuKung420 posted...

That work policy won't continue after you stop working there. Do you plan on working there until death?

Pretty sure you can parlay that into a normal plan or just take a normal plan afterward but, again, he has no spouse or dependents so he doesn't exactly need life insurance.

Riptor posted...

That's what I was thinking also. Depending on how old you are, whenever you stop working at that job, the next time you try to get your own insurance it may cost more than the $1k or so you may have spent keeping the original coverage active. It sounds like you already considered that though.

He's still young enough that life insurance will be cheap afterward and, again, he doesn't exactly need it. More importantly, he's unlikely to be paying $1k/month for life insurance since that's pretty high for even a yearly rate for somebody his age and in good health. What he was paying may actually be high for his group, since the average for people older than him is only $26/month.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/average-life-insurance-rates

---

My mom would have been the beneficiary of the old one and is of the new one.

Zeus posted...

He's still young enough that life insurance will be cheap afterward and, again, he doesn't exactly need it. More importantly, he's unlikely to be paying $1k/month for life insurance since that's pretty high for even a yearly rate for somebody his age and in good health. What he was paying may actually be high for his group, since the average for people older than him is only $26/month.

That $1k was an estimate for the total amount paid during his tenure with this current job. At his $20/month rate, I ballparked 4-5 years at the job. Could wind up being more, could wind up being way less. Either way, 1k isn't a ton of money over that span of time, compared to how much the difference could be if he ages into a different bracket, or develops a medical condition, by the time he has to get separate insurance again.


---

Riptor posted...

That $1k was an estimate for the total amount paid during his tenure with this current job. At his $20/month rate, I ballparked 4-5 years at the job. Could wind up being more, could wind up being way less. Either way, 1k isn't a ton of money over that span of time, compared to how much the difference could be if he ages into a different bracket, or develops a medical condition, by the time he has to get separate insurance again.

You're both assuming that:
A) he doesn't keep this job forever (which admittedly is a fair assessment, considering the work)
B) that his next job doesn't also offer free life insurance.

The majority of companies offer free or subsidized life insurance alongside their other insurances. I guess if we wanted to go out to a point C, there is a chance he might never need life insurance at all. Most specifically, life insurance is an essential if you have kids, but not everybody is having kids these days. It can be a benefit if you have a spouse, but it's far less of a benefit unless only one partner is working which, again, doesn't happen nearly as much any more (and even marriage is becoming less common)

---