Kiyanathomas 1) IULs For College Planning

 IULs For College Planning

There are many reasons that you may plan for your death, one being the provision of an income for those that you love so that they are able to maintain their standard of life. There are different types of life insurance but typically the common goal is this death benefit protection.

Many people are surprised to learn that they can use IUL for college planning. It is the cash value accumulation feature of indexed universal life insurance that makes it a tool for funding your children’s college education.

When funded properly, an IUL policy can build up enough cash to help pay the cost of college for your children and grandchildren. Using life insurance for college savings simply makes a lot of sense.

To make it in this world, now more than ever before, it is important to have an education beyond high school, and that does not come cheap. Economic upheaval and the rising cost of living make it quite challenging for parents to put aside enough money to finance their children’s education.

It is possible to get maximum benefit by starting an indexed universal life insurance policy early to protect your family in the event of the death of a spouse. This same life insurance policy can also be used to help cover the cost of higher education. You are simply buying life insurance to pay for college.

If you didn’t know, college is expensive. In fact, it’s very expensive and getting more and more expensive every year. The average college student is going to face around $30,000 to $100,000 in debt by the time they graduate and there are a lot of students who will have much more debt than that.

If something were to happen to you, then your family could struggle to pay for those college expenses. For this reason, we recommend that families invest in life insurance for college savings so that two risks can be mitigated with one investment product.

Again, starting early is key to any savings goal that you might have.  Accumulation of funds inside an indexed UL product for college or other major costs is a long-term strategy. 

I can’t tell you how many times clients have come to me and ask me what they can do to start an education fund for their kids who are in high school. Although not impossible, starting college saving this late really makes it difficult.

When the kids are young many of us think of a 529 plan for college.  This is great, but there are limitations. Many times we suggest that indexed universal life be considered to help in the college planning process.

Death benefit protection, diversification, annual reset, and tax-deferred growth are the 4 key features of indexed universal life for college planning.  A properly designed IUL policy can provide all 4.

Just like any great plan, you need to stick with it. While indexed universal life is not the only answer to college funding, sticking with your plan will make life much easier and enjoyable.

Some of us are thinking about how we will retire at about the same time that our children will be entering college. What better feeling is there than to know that you have financially prepared for that day by using life insurance for college savings?

The security of knowing that your loved ones will be well taken care of should you die is reason enough to buy life insurance. Many parents worry about what will become of their loved ones in case of their sudden death or the sudden death of their bread-winning spouse. This is well taken care of through indexed universal life insurance.

Diversification plus Protection from downward risk

With indexed universal life, you are able to grow your money through exposure to domestic and global markets. Indexes such as the S&P, DOW, NASDAQ, Hang Seng, and Euro Stox determine how much our how little your policy cash value will earn.

Because of a feature called annual reset, your money is protected from market downturns.  With this feature, you have no chance of losing what you have paid in premiums plus the prior interest that you have earned.

It is this cash accumulation that can be used easily for college funding. It is up to you to decide how the cash value of your indexed universal life insurance policy funds are to be used.

Tax-Deferred Growth Potential

With indexed universal life insurance, you get the benefit of building tax-deferred cash value that will be accessible to you in the future for whatever need you might have. This is a great benefit that you will not get in term life insurance.

Any premium payments that you will be making above the cost of insurance will be able to grow tax-deferred at whatever rate that the indexes you have chosen perform. This is a huge opportunity for you to accumulate wealth over time, which can be used for college, retirement or any other financial need you may have.

How do I actually use indexed universal life insurance for college savings?

Now it is time to send the kids off to school. You have followed your plan and now have plenty saved for college. So how do you actually use indexed universal life for college?

Your funds can be accessed in a couple of ways. You can use policy loans or withdrawals.  I recommend that you would use policy loans.  Loans are not taxable and do not have to be repaid.

By using loans, your funds stay in the policy and continue to grow. In most cases, after college is over our clients are able to use this same policy to supplement their retirement income.

Again, this is income tax-free.

529 College Savings Plan

The “go to” plans for most parents are 529 Plans, Coverdale ESAs (Education Savings Accounts), and state tuition savings programs. Setting aside funds in these plans is certainly better than doing nothing, but these plans have inherent shortfalls. A 529 Plan is really a brokerage account that can go up during a market rally but can also drastically drop in value when the market slumps. Imagine having this plan if you were sending your child off to school in 2009—just after the 2008 market crash. Other factors related to 529 Plans are you can only reposition your funds once a year, and if you need to pull your money out of the plan for non-education expenses, you will incur a tax liability and a 10% penalty. Prepaid state tuition plans can work well, but only if your child goes to school in your state. Coverdale ESAs are also investment accounts dependent on market fluctuations so could potentially lose value, and they have lower contribution limits than a 529 Plan—$2,000 per beneficiary in 2017. Most parents are completely unaware there is an alternative that doesn’t cap the amount you can contribute, has no downside of principal loss, and the funds can be used for any purpose without penalty. This alternative is properly structured cash value insurance.

College Fund

How do you use cash value insurance for college funding? The first, and most important, step is working with a professional who knows how to structure a policy for capital growth. As I discuss in my book The Private Vault, the key is to design the policy so it has the lowest coverage possible for the premium that is paid into the policy. By minimizing the coverage, the majority of the premium payment is allocated to growth instead of insurance cost. It is essential the policy be designed to accumulate as much tax-free growth as possible. This strategy works for both dividend paying whole life insurance and Indexed Universal Life (IUL) Insurance. Both types of policies are designed to accumulate capital and have the same access to capital for any purpose. The distinction between these policies is based upon how they grow in value. Dividend Whole Life Insurance grows in value based upon dividends being paid to the policy holders as determined by the board of directors of the insurance company. In a Dividend Whole Life Policy, we generally see a 5% to 6% growth opportunity. An IUL has two growth buckets. The first is an interest-bearing account, and the second is the index account. It is in the indexed account where we see the real growth opportunity. The account grows by linking to an index (i.e. S&P 500), and the gains are forever locked in; if the index goes down in value, you don’t lose any underlying principal. Historically, we see a little shy of an 8% annual return when linked to the S&P 500. This return is just an average, so there will be years where it is higher and years where it is lower, but it never drops below 0%. An additional benefit of cash values inside an insurance policy is the capital is not treated as a qualifying asset when parents are looking to qualify their child for financial aid. Theoretically, a parent could have millions of dollars inside a policy, and it would be exempt for financial aid purposes.

Saving for College

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a parent who sets up a policy to pay for education. I recently prepared a proposal for a grandmother looking to fund her 3-month-old granddaughter’s future college expenses. The grandmother wants to allocate $10,000 annually to a policy until her granddaughter turns 18. When the granddaughter turns 18, the policy is projected to have $309,873—based upon an average index growth rate of 7.11%. If she decides to wait to pay for the student loans when her granddaughter graduates at 22, the policy is projected to have $408,065. If her granddaughter decides not to go to school, the grandmother can access the funds at any time via a tax-free loan.

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