[mleonhard]

I tried to buy decreasing term life insurance, where the benefit decreases continuously over 20 years, matching the needs of my family. I consulted with several agents and none of them could sell it to me. The best they could do was to divide the term into three time periods with different benefit amounts.

One agent told me that most customers drop their policy after a few years. The companies earn most of their income from the initial periods of policies, when payouts are rare.

[lotsofpulp]

I applied for term life insurance at 3 or 4 life insurance companies, and they all allowed you to reduce the benefit amount a few times over the term.

Not every year, but they said it was no problem if you wanted to halve the benefit halfway through or even a second time after that (and they would lower the premiums commensurately of course).

I have Principal and Protective in the US.

[mleonhard]

Your comment is essentially "me too". That's not interesting.

[lotsofpulp]

You are right, I was too quick to interpret the first time and thought you wrote that the best they could do is sell you three different policies that you cancel whenever you want to drop that benefit amount.

[civilized]

There's a startup that will do this but I don't know if you'd want a policy with a startup.

[mleonhard]

Please share a link. And in the future, try to share links or at least names of things you tell people about. If you can't find the link or name, then say so. I think saying only "the thing you want exists" is a little rude.

[civilized]

No thanks, not after that display of attitude.

Scolding people for not giving you more than they already gave you for free is a behavior that will never get you what you want.

Update: eh, I'm in a good mood today so I'll tell you the name, it's Ladder. No link though. You may Google it as penance for being annoying.

[mleonhard]

To save others the search: https://www.ladderlife.com/

Are you sure that Ladder offers decreasing benefit insurance? I looked all over their website and found nothing about decreasing benefits. The name "Ladder" might imply the technique, called "laddering", of buying multiple policies to achieve decreasing coverage.

[lcorwin]

In the spirit of saving the search - yes, it does offer the ability to decrease coverage as needed, with premiums decreasing by the same percentage as well (i.e. if you decrease benefit by half, premiums decrease by half, too).

Here's a link if it's helpful! https://www.ladderlife.com/laddering