Life insurance is complicated; before you can compare prices and plans you have to figure out which type of life insurance is right for you.

Surprising to us is what a great job the insurance company New York Life does at explaining the differences, without complicating things with a lot of sales pitches, between the four main types of life insurance: term life, whole live, variable universal life and universal life insurance.

Take the time to study this page carefully, even consider printing it out and adding your own notes.

By the way, you can also click a link at the bottom of this page to talk with someone at New York Life about the specifics of your insurance needs. We applaud the quality of New York Life’s and the clear separation between content and sales. We wish more companies would take this approach on their websites.

Meanwhile, here are two other things you will notice when you do your own search:

1. You will see many sites in your search results trying to sell you term life insurance.

Why?

Because term life is usually the cheapest insurance you can get.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the right insurance for you.

2. You may also see lots of pages in your search results that claim they can help you get the “cheapest” life insurance.

But again, buying life insurance just because it’s the cheapest is a bad plan.

First figure out what you need, then figure out which plan fits your need at the best price. That’s a lot different than just buying insurance because it’s the cheapest.

When buying life insurance, you need to know who you are talking to – an insurance agent, an insurance broker, or a bot – because who each represents (you or the insurance company), who has the access to the most or best insurance products, and even commission rates for each can vary wildly.

There are pros and cons of working with both insurance agents and insurance brokers, so make sure you understand the difference.

And that bot you’re chatting with online?

It could represent an agent or a broker, so be sure you ask.

For more information on the difference between brokers and agents, see this breakdown from AdvisorSmith.

Bundling life insurance with other coverage like auto or homeowner’s insurance through your current insurance provider might save you a lot of money.

This is a no-brainer:

Call your existing insurance agent or company and ask them if they will offer a discount on all your insurance policies if you add life insurance.

You’re going to get screwed if you don’t pay attention to advertiser disclosures.

Between the time you click on a link to visit a website and when you actually consider putting your trust in the information offered by that website, you should make sure you read the website’s “Advertising Disclosure.”

Our recommendation is that you look for an advertising disclosure statement that not only clearly explains the website’s relationship with advertisers but also makes clear that the content you’re reading is in no way influenced by their relationship with advertisers.

For instance, we keep singling out BankRate.com because we think their policy outlined on their advertiser disclosure is terrible because it contains language like this:

The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site, including, for example, the order in which they may appear within the listing categories.

We also gave Dave Ramsey’s website our lowest rating. Although the content is terrific, it is also deceptive because there is no advertiser disclosure and it’s not clear until you get to the bottom of the page that the entire page is a setup for their advertiser Zander Insurance.