Life Insurance Cheat Sheet.
The night-before summary, built like the exam.

The heavily tested figures are: a 70% passing score is typically required; the grace period is typically 30 or 31 days after a missed premium; the incontestability clause and the suicide clause each run for the policy's first two years; annuity withdrawals before age 59½ generally incur a 10% early-withdrawal penalty; and employer-paid group life coverage is tax-free to the employee up to $50,000. Whole life matures when cash value equals the face amount, typically at age 100 or 121. Drill these until recall is automatic.

Watch for these classic distractors: insurable interest in life insurance must exist only at the inception of the policy, not at the time of loss; a revocable beneficiary can be changed any time by the owner, but an irrevocable beneficiary must consent to a change; and if no beneficiary survives, proceeds go to the insured's estate. On products, remember a fixed annuity puts investment risk on the insurer while a variable annuity shifts risk to the owner and is a security requiring registration — and selling variable life takes a FINRA registration on top of a life license. On taxation, a MEC fails the seven-pay test and its loans and withdrawals are taxed LIFO.

Know the core provisions cold: the misstatement of age provision adjusts the death benefit to what the premium would have bought at the correct age, and the nonforfeiture options are cash surrender, reduced paid-up insurance, and extended term. For riders, waiver of premium waives premiums if the insured becomes totally disabled, guaranteed insurability lets the insured buy more coverage at set intervals without evidence of insurability, and the accelerated death benefit rider advances part of the death benefit on a terminal-illness diagnosis. These come up repeatedly in scenario questions.

The essentials: a death benefit paid to a named beneficiary in a lump sum is generally received income-tax-free; under a settlement option the principal stays tax-free but interest earned is taxable; and premiums for personal life insurance are not tax-deductible. For annuities, each payment is split by the exclusion ratio into tax-free return of principal and taxable earnings taxed as ordinary income, and a 1035 exchange lets an owner swap one like-kind life or annuity contract for another without triggering current tax.

Use it as a rapid final review, not a substitute for study — skim every line and flag anything you can't explain in your own words, then reread just those flagged items. Give extra passes to the pure-memorization facts like the grace period of typically 30 or 31 days and the two-year incontestability window, since those are easy points if recalled and easy misses if not. Then stop, sleep, and glance at your flagged items once more in the morning.

No — it condenses the must-know rules, but the exam tests application, not just recall. Scenario questions ask you to apply concepts like term insurance building no cash value or universal life letting the owner adjust premiums and death benefits within limits, and you only get fast at that through practice questions and full topic review. Use the cheat sheet to lock in facts and a course plus practice sets to build the judgment the exam actually measures.