You don’t want to think about not being here to protect your family but if you were to die tomorrow, would your family be able to stay in their home, make their car payments or pay for college? Or would the lifestyle you’ve worked so hard to provide suddenly become out of reach?

Life insurance can help provide for the people who depend on you financially. The proceeds can be used for final expenses, to help replace your lost income, pay your mortgage, help fund your child’s education, and more. Some types of insurance offer a tax-advantaged⁴ way to build cash value toward retirement.

Life insurance may sound expensive. In fact, in a recent survey, fewer than 20% of consumers were able to correctly estimate the cost of life insurance and most overestimated the cost by as much as three times⁵. The good news is that there are life insurance solutions for every family’s budget.

Our financial representatives can work with you to find a life insurance solution that best meets your needs and circumstances, now and in the future.

Learn more about our life insurance products

⁴ Foresters Financial and its representatives do not provide tax advice. Consult your tax professional.
⁵ 2014 LIMRA Insurance Barometer Study

After years of hard work, you deserve a rewarding retirement. But it takes planning to reach that goal and traditional sources of retirement income are decreasing. For example, a 2015 study found that 68% of working-age Americans are not contributing to an employer-sponsored plan because they were not offered one⁶. 

To safeguard against the risk of outliving your assets, you may want to consider an annuity, a contract issued by a life insurer which guarantees a steady stream of income at some point in the future. 

Our financial representatives can work with you to find an annuity solution that best meets your needs and circumstances, now and in the future. 

• Learn more about our annuities
• Understanding annuities

⁶ Forbes: The Retirement Crisis: Why 68% Of Americans Aren't Saving In An Employer-Sponsored Plan, April 2015

Mutual funds are one of the most popular ways you can chart a path to help you achieve your financial goals. When you invest in a mutual fund, you essentially pool your money with other investors who have similar objectives. Your advisor can help you find a mutual fund in line with your objectives. Fund managers use their expertise to combine different investments and make investment decisions. When you invest in a mutual fund, you’ve essentially hired a professional portfolio manager to monitor your portfolio's holdings and do his or her best to buy and sell depending on various factors.

At Foresters Financial, we value the opportunity to help you make your financial dreams a reality. With a long-term approach to investing, we respect risk and we take fund performance seriously. Regardless of what you’re saving or investing for, we can work with you to assess your current financial situation and recommend solutions that match your risk tolerance and future goals. 

• Learn more about our mutual funds
• Understanding mutual funds
• Asset allocation. It’s all in the mix
• Dollar cost averaging

Previous generations could rely on Social Security and employer pension benefits for a comfortable retirement. But with fewer private pension plans, increased economic uncertainty and longer life expectancy, the retirement landscape has changed.

This means more Americans have to take charge of their own retirement plans. Yet, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that roughly half of Americans die with less than $10,000 in assets beyond their annual retirement incomes.⁷

Whether retirement is decades away or just around the corner, it’s important to think about when you would like to retire, how much income you’ll need to maintain your lifestyle and what steps you can take now to make it a reality. Our financial representatives can work with you to help you find retirement and savings solutions that best meet your goals. 

• Learn more about retirement planning
• You’ve gotten a late start
• The power of tax deferral

⁷ Were They Prepared for Retirement? Financial Status at Advanced Ages in the HRS and AHEAD Cohorts, James M. Poterba, Steven F. Venti, David A. Wise, NBER Working Paper No 17824, February 2012

In today's world, success is often directly correlated to the level of a person's education. Unfortunately, the cost of all forms of education is on the rise. 

While a college education is a worthwhile investment, it's forcing many students to take on significant debt in order to attend. Nearly seven in 10 graduates from the class of 2014 took out institutional, state or federal loans, graduating with an average $28,077 in debt⁸. Understandably, many families are concerned about how to fund their children's education. Foresters Financial can help. We offer several possible solutions to help you cover educational expenses.

• Paying for education
• Funding education

The investment decisions you make provide the foundation for the financial life you and your family will have. As your assets accumulate and your financial goals change with different life events, the tools and strategies you use to manage your investments may have to evolve as well.

One way to stay on top of these changes is to have your portfolio actively managed and monitored. That’s why Foresters Advisory Services, LLC created Advisory Services. Your Investment Advisor Representative, backed by a team of investment professionals, will help you understand the link between your financial goals and investments and choose investment planning and portfolio management solutions. 

Learn more about Advisory Services

If you’re just starting your career, retirement can seem like the concern of an older generation but the earlier you start to plan, the more likely you are to reach your retirement goals. The good news – if you begin early time is on your side!

Begin by answering some basic questions:

• When would you like to retire and what do you plan to do then? Work part-time? Start a new career? Engage in volunteer work?
• Do you see yourself on a yacht in the Caribbean, puttering in a rural garden, or both?
• How much money will you need to ensure the kind of retirement that you dream of and what steps can you take today to work towards it?

A Foresters Financial representative can help you answer these questions and help you plan for your future. Our solutions can help provide an ongoing income stream throughout your retirement. As you move through each of life’s stages and milestones, we will help you reassess and change course as needed.

• Learn about our retirement options
• On Your Own
• The three-step approach

If you’re between 35 and 55, you may be juggling multiple responsibilities such as making mortgage payments, caring for aging parents and raising your children.

If you already have a retirement plan, this may be a good time to revisit your goals and to consider diversifying or adjusting your portfolio. If you don’t have anything saved for your future yet, there is still a lot you can do to ensure your retirement is as comfortable as possible.

As children leave home and complete their education, there may be ways you can reduce costs. Regardless of your situation, Foresters Financial has representatives who can work with you to complete a retirement needs calculation help you and develop a plan for the future.

• Learn more about retirement
• Your child graduated from college
• You’ve gotten a late start 
• The benefits of working with a financial professional

You’ve heard about the importance of saving and growing your assets for retirement, but as retirement approaches, you face a new challenge: How to generate an ongoing income stream to help sustain you during your retirement, which could last 30 years or more. That’s where it can help to have a retirement income strategy to help provide a stream of income, some protection from inflation and market volatility, and potential for growth. While this may sound overwhelming, it doesn't have to be. 

Generating dependable income throughout retirement involves asking key questions, such as how Social Security, personal savings and investments fit together to build your plan, what your income needs will be, and how your plan can manage risks. By asking such questions, you can make informed decisions toward realizing the retirement you want.

A Foresters Financial representative can work with you to structure a retirement income strategy based on your needs and risk tolerance.

• Learn more about our retirement products
• The benefits of working with a financial professional
• Learn more about our Premier Advisory Service

Conversations about money are not romantic but taking the time to discuss finances with your partner can help you avoid major disagreements down the road. When merging money, both partners need to be honest about their current financial situation, their financial style (e.g. saver or splurger) and their future plans for children, home ownership and retirement.

If you rely on two salaries to cover daily expenses, you’ll need at least six months of emergency savings in case one of you loses a job. If you have a mortgage together, you might want to consider life insurance so you’ll be able to stay in your home should one of you pass away unexpectedly. Once you’re both clear on where you stand financially, you can discuss short- and long-term priorities and investment preferences.

Whatever your goals and income, Foresters Financial can work with you to help you find the retirement and savings solutions that are right for you.

• You’ve just gotten married. Now What?
• Benefits of working with a financial professional (PDF)
• Learn more about our mutual funds
• Learn more about our life insurance options
• Learn more about our retirement options

Buying a home is not just a part of the American dream, it’s one of the biggest and most complex financial decisions you will ever make so it’s important to have the right savings and protections in place.

In addition to the obvious costs like a down payment and mortgage, home ownership involves many additional expenses such as property taxes, annual repairs and regular maintenance. You will likely need an emergency fund to cover unexpected costs such as a leaky roof, a new furnace or faulty plumbing.

Whether home ownership is years away or you’ve just signed the mortgage on your first home, life insurance and investments could enable you to replace lost income and stay in your home if your partner passes away unexpectedly, or ensure that goals, such as a child’s education, can still be achieved. You’ll also want to continue contributing to your retirement, so you’ll need to consider that as well when budgeting.

• You’ve just bought a house. Now What?
• Money is tight. The high cost of procrastination?
• Learn more about our life insurance options

Like many of life’s milestones, becoming a parent has a big impact on your financial situation. Recent findings suggest that it costs an average of $245,000 to raise a child to the age of 18² and that doesn’t include paying for college.

You’ll need a plan for childcare – will one of you be able to stay home to look after the baby or will you need to pay for childcare? Once your child is old enough for school, you’ll have new choices to make. Public school or private? Which extracurricular activities will they choose? The costs can really add up.

While these costs can be significant, it’s important not to lose sight of important longer-term financial responsibilities. By exploring your investment and savings options now, you take advantage of a very powerful ally – time. And by considering life insurance alternatives now, you’ll avoid a harmful trap – the cost of waiting.

You can find a Foresters Financial representative to give you an estimate of appropriate life insurance coverage, a realistic projection of education costs and make saving, insurance and investment recommendations for your family. 

• You’re having a baby. Now What?
• The Power of Time?
• Learn more about our life insurance options

When high school ends, you’ll want your child to pursue an education that will give them the most opportunities for a successful future. Whether they want to pursue a college degree or a trade, education can be very expensive.

The cost of college has risen dramatically over the last decade, forcing many students to incur significant debt to realize their academic dreams. Average college tuition and fees rose over three percent in 2015-2016, according to U.S. News data³, breaking down as follows:

• Private school tuition and fees averaged $32,599 in 2015-2016,
• At public universities, out-of-staters paid an average of $20,729, while residents paid $8,957.

And that’s not counting room and board.

So it’s no surprise that 36% of Millennials have student loan debt and 55% of that group are worried they won’t be able to pay it back⁴.

Foresters Financial has a range of solutions to help plan for college expenses to ensure your children can continue their education even if you’re no longer here.

• Creating a college investment plan
• Learn more about our education savings options
• Learn more about our life insurance options
• Learn more about our Premier Advisory Service

³ Paying for College, US News & World, September 9, 2015
⁴ Council for Economic Education: Economic and Personal Finance Education in Our Nation’s Schools, 2014

What would happen if you passed away unexpectedly? It’s not pleasant to think about but if others are relying on you financially, it’s time to push aside your discomfort and develop a plan to protect your family. If you were to die tomorrow, would your family still be able to pay the mortgage, auto loans, college tuition and other expenses? In a recent study, one third of Americans said they would feel the financial impact from the loss of a primary wage earner within only one month². Adequate life insurance can help keep your family’s dreams alive, regardless of what the future holds.

Our representatives can meet with you to assess your situation and review your debts, your dependents and your long-term financial goals so that we can find the right solutions to meet your needs.

• Understanding life insurance
• The facts of life
• Try our life insurance needs calculator
• Learn more about our life insurance options

² Foresters Financial and its representatives do not provide tax or estate planning advice.  Consult your tax and estate planning professional.

 

You’ve worked hard your entire life to create the lifestyle you always dreamed of for yourself and your family but what do you want your legacy to be?  Whether your desire is to protect a child or grandchild with special needs, donate to your most endearing charity or alma mater, or simply leave everything you’ve attained to your family and friends in the most tax efficient manner², how will you ensure this becomes a reality? Foresters Financial can help with the legacy you decide.

• Learn more about our life insurance options
• Learn more about our mutual funds
• Understanding life insurance

² Foresters Financial and its representatives do not provide tax or estate planning advice.  Consult your tax and estate planning professional.

 

Losing a loved one is difficult enough without having to worry about the additional burden of final expenses. With a traditional funeral now estimated to cost more than $8,000³, many American families have to borrow money, sell assets or dip into retirement savings when a family member dies unexpectedly.

If you don’t have a plan to cover final expenses, they will likely be left to your loved ones. At the very least you should consider insurance that would cover basic funeral expenses and provide a cushion for your family. But ideally you should consider purchasing insurance that can replace the income your family would lose.

Foresters Financial has life insurance products that are specifically designed to help with final expenses as well as a full range of traditional life insurance options.

• Learn more about our life insurance options

³ LIMRA 2014 Life Insurance Awareness Month fact sheet