You're not going to believe how much you're being overcharged for unnecessary or duplicate insurance. Here's how to check for overcharges on your insurance policy:

For starters, never - we repeat, never - think of insurance as an investment. Any insurance policy you use as an investment is costing you much more than you need to be paying. You can buy all sorts of investments that will treat you better than an "insurance" investment. We'll talk more about these later. Right now, though, we want you to buy insurance as insurance - an ironclad guarantee that you or your loved ones will still be able to make ends meet if faced with a permanent loss of income.

Insurance sales agents aren't dopes. They know exactly which buttons to push to get you to ante up more money. Here are three common pitches you should avoid:

1. Accidental death coverage. Statistically, it's extremely unlikely that you will die in an accident.

2. Child life insurance. Generally, this is one of the biggest rip-offs in life insurance. Unless your child is the major family breadwinner, you don't need insurance on your child's life. Insurance agents are super-savvy on this one. They'll say you will guarantee your child's insurability when they're grown. Absolutely false.

Unless you're the parents of Shirley Temple, you're probably not dependent on your child's income, right? If you're going to buy an insurance policy on your child in order to pay for your son's or daughter's college education, put the money in U.S. Government EE Savings Bonds instead. You'll earn at least 4% a year, free of state and local tax, guaranteed by Uncle Sam.

Insurance agents will also prey on you by saying, "Oh, but it's such a little amount of money," or "It will pay for the funeral costs." It doesn't matter. If it's a $10-a-month premium, that's $10 you could put toward a savings bond. You can use that money to pay for a funeral if you need to - or for all the joyous milestones in your child's life.

3. Whole-life insurance. Term-life insurance, not whole-life insurance makes the best sense for most people.

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