As with any trend, there are reasons to back it up. IUL is the fastest growing individual life insurance product. LIMRA shows 2019 second quarter growth at 23%. In its simplest form, it is a universal life product supported by the cash value that is credited by the index it is tied to and the deposits the client funds it with. By far, the most common index is the S&P 500.

It's open enrollment season for Medicare beneficiaries.

And, as in past years, there are changes, especially with Medicare Advantage plans, that might trip you up if you're not careful, says Katy Votava, president of Goodcare.com and author of Making the Most of Medicare: A Guide for Baby Boomers.

​An immediate annuity pays out income right away, as soon as it is purchased from the annuity issuer. Sometimes these vehicles are called “payout annuities” or “income annuities.”

While traditional stand-alone long-term care insurance (LTC) products have seen a drop in popularity in the past several years as a result of companies leaving the marketplace and of spiraling policy premiums, life insurance-backed long-term care financing strategies have experienced tremendous growth. In 2019, life-LTC hybrid policies increased by about 5 percent to 260,000 new policies sold. To put this in perspective, only 70,000 stand-alone policies were sold in 2019, but over 750,000 had been sold back in 2000. Furthermore, new premiums paid for these hybrid policies increased by over 18 percent, and about 25 percent of all new U.S. life insurance premiums paid went to policies that offer benefits for long-term care or chronic illness. While there have been a few new products developed in the stand-alone long-term care insurance market like one rolled out in the summer of 2019 by New York Life, most of the recent developments have been in the hybrid-based life insurance market.

​Life insurance has been like the oatmeal of financial services products in recent years.

Life insurance serves an important financial wellness purpose, and it fills life insurers with premium revenue. But, except for variable universal life and indexed universal life, it has not been a hot growth product.

Self-employment is not restricted to one field. You could be an independent artist, a freelance content writer or an accountant who runs a business on his own. The concept of getting self-employment health insurance is not new, but still many people do not know much about it and those who know rarely try to get into it because of some unknown fears.