It recently occurred to me that I've been writing several articles about life insurance, individual, group, family, and so on, but I haven't taken the time to actually explain the basics of life insurance itself. I'm going to do that in this article.

Life insurance policies pay a death benefit, which is known as the "face value" to the beneficiary of the policy. The face value is nothing more than the amount of the policy. Example, a $100,000 life insurance policy would have a face value of $100,000, a $50,000 life insurance policy would have a face value of $50,000, etc. that's all there is to it.

Besides the insurance company, there are only three other people normally involved with any one life insurance policy. These three people are the owner, the insured and the beneficiary. Let's take a look at each one of these people.

The owner of the policy is the person who purchased the policy and is making the premium payments. The owner of the policy makes all of the decisions regarding the policy, including who is going to be insured and who the beneficiary is.

The insured person is exactly that, the person that the insurance was bought for. In the event that something happened to the person that is insured by the policy, a payment would be made to the beneficiary.

The beneficiary is the person that receives payment in the event that anything happens to the insured. There can be more than one beneficiary for each insurance policy. Example, let's say that one of your parents has a life insurance policy and they pass away suddenly. If you have brothers and sisters there is a good chance that your parents named all of you as beneficiaries of the policy.

Example, let's say that you have one brother and one sister and the policy was for $60,000 even. In this case, you would each receive $20,000. If you're an only child you'd receive it all.

There are only three basic types of life insurance. These are Whole Life, Endowment and Term. Although there are different variations of insurance policies, these are the three that you really need to focus on if you're considering getting a life insurance policy for yourself.