Life Insurance for children?

I'm looking into saving up for Khristianna's college fund.

I've received this thing in the mail, and was wondering if i should apply for it.

www.gerberlife.com

it's called the grow up plan

it's basically life insurance for Tianna, till she's 21 it doubles and she can cash it out or something of that nature.

or should i just open an account and just put money in there every month lol (i am so tempted i might spend it LOL)

anyone have this or anything like this for their kids? should i apply?

[Janet]

I've rec'd those in the mail many times and have thought the same thing. We ended up just putting it in savings and then when there was enough transfering it to CD's. The thing is now....we have to be careful, our savings is drawing more then the CD's now...so we just leave it there until the rates get better. Plus, whenever we might have a little extra...we put it in his savings and I don't think you can do that with the Gerber Plan. Bottom line is you have to check it out really good, (we never did check it out completely) and do what is best and easiest for you to save.

I do recommend if you think you may have trouble leaving it alone...it may be a good idea. That is one reason we switched it to CD's...we couldn't touch it in case of emergency without a big penalty that we weren't ready to pay.

[DianaB]

Don't those insurance plans for children start out real cheap and get more expensive as they get older? I think that you'd be better off putting the money in savings for the child as opposed to insurance.

[Tink]

You can buy whole life insurance through any life insurance company and accomplish the same.

One good way to save is to have a set amount directly deposited from your pay before you even see it. you can buy a trust or savings account, CD etc FOR the child in their name with another responsible adult as custodian. This way YOU can't touch it. Once gifted, it's out of your control. IF you choose to do this, just make sure the custodian you choose is someone who won't touch it either. It can be set up to only be withdrawn at a certain age. I would suggest setting it up so that it can't all be withdrawn at one time either.

[SweetCuteness]

Originally Posted by Tink

You can buy whole life insurance through any life insurance company and accomplish the same.

One good way to save is to have a set amount directly deposited from your pay before you even see it. you can buy a trust or savings account, CD etc FOR the child in their name with another responsible adult as custodian. This way YOU can't touch it. Once gifted, it's out of your control. IF you choose to do this, just make sure the custodian you choose is someone who won't touch it either. It can be set up to only be withdrawn at a certain age. I would suggest setting it up so that it can't all be withdrawn at one time either.

The whole life insurance is VERY inexpensive and it gains interest. They do not get a lot more expensive like a lot of the other things you see advertised. IMHO, whole life insurance is the best way to go. And if your kids decide to keep it as life insurance, they can do so - or they can take it out at a certain age to use for school. I would go speak to an actual insurance agent (shop around at a couple companies). My whole life insurance is for $100,000, and it's $3.57/month. Just to show you how inexpensive they are, if you were to put $3.57 just in a savings account every months for 18 years, you'd only have $771.12 - see, it saves you a ton of money.

Federal regulation says it has to begin to gain interest after a 3 years I think. Plus, if they don't use the entire fund for college, they'll still have what's left over in life insurance.

[HALEY]

i went to a stock broker for our sons college fund, my sister got that for her kids and set me up with that when Micah was born, it was 500.00 down and 50.00 a month, plus all the extra money he gets for Birthdays, Christmas etc. i throw it in there for him. i really don't understand it to much, but my sister is very smart when it comes to stocks so i trust her..

and his life insurance i got it thru work, and so does my husband so i can't help you there. we both have 5,000 on him now when he gets older i will increase it. to 20,000.