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Life insurance plays a crucial role in securing the financial future of a family.  And, while the decision to buy a policy is an easy one, purchasing one can be vexing due to the overwhelming number of choices available.

Unquestionably there is an excitement that emanates from the world of stock picking, where fortunes are won and lost on trading floor arenas, and stock sleuths frantically search for the next Apple or Google.

For more than a century Americans fulfilled their life insurance needs with a venerable but rather stodgy and plain vanilla protection product called whole life. It served everyone extremely well, however, it never ranked among the more exciting things people liked to talk about.

If any good came out of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, it is that it made many of us become more financially literate and more aware of the need to pay attention to our finances. We now think before making purchases and we are better at prioritizing our expenditures.

You’re entertaining some friends at your house and everyone is having a marvelous time. Suddenly you hear a crash in the kitchen and you race to investigate. You find one of your friends laying flat on her back, unconscious.

The purchase of a life insurance policy will never make most peoples’ top ten list of favorite things to do. After all, there is a lot not to like in the whole process of buying life insurance. With hundreds of products from which to choose, it can be confusing. Insurance contracts can be complex and mind numbing. Some insurance agents can be annoying.

Even as the stock market works its way to new highs, retirement savers, still shell-shocked from the extreme volatility of recent years, are slow to wade back into equities. Smaller investors tend to ignore the history that shows that the market eventually rewards those who can withstand the fluctuations and stay the course through the various market cycles.

In the ever changing landscape of life insurance products, there remains one stalwart that has changed very little since the first American life insurance companies emerged in the mid 1800s - the Whole Life plan.

The good news is that life insurance rates continue to decline and people are buying more term life coverage than ever before. The bad news, is that many people are recognizing that the need for life insurance last a lot longer than most term policies. After the term policy expires, the cost to buy a new policy can get expensive.

While our extended longevity should be greeted with gratitude for the possibility of enjoying a longer life with our grandchildren, many retirees are approaching it with trepidation, wondering if their hard earned assets will be sufficient to fulfill their vision of a good life for the rest of their life – however long it should last.