What is the Colonial Penn $9.95 plan, and what does it actually buy?
Direct Life Advisors is an independent life insurance agency, not an insurance company, and is not affiliated with any insurer mentioned here.
The $9.95 figure in the advertising is a price per unit of coverage, not a price for a policy. Colonial Penn's own customer FAQ states that the benefit one unit buys depends on age, gender and state of residence (gender is not used in every state) — so two people paying the same amount each month can hold very different amounts of coverage.
That is the whole mechanic, and it is the part the advertising does not lead with. We do not publish the unit table here: the versions circulating online are third-party reproductions, and a figure that is wrong for your age or your state is worse than no figure at all.
Talk it through with a licensed agent.
Fifteen minutes, no charge — we'll tell you which product your answers qualify for and what it costs, across several carriers at once.
(888) 753-8706No cost to you. We're paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.
How unit pricing works
Most life insurance is sold the other way round: you choose the death benefit, and the carrier tells you the cost. Unit-priced coverage inverts it. You choose how many units to buy, each unit costs the same fixed amount, and the benefit attached to a unit is set by a table.
Because the table varies by age, by gender and by state, there is no single answer to "what does a unit buy." A 52-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man buying identical numbers of units at an identical monthly cost hold coverage that is not remotely comparable. The older the buyer, the less a unit is worth.
We do not print a unit table on this page. The published tables we have seen are third-party reproductions, and a coverage figure that is wrong for your age or your state is worse than no figure at all. Ask for it in writing, from the carrier, for your own age and state.
The questions that settle it
Before you compare a unit-priced policy to anything else, get these four answers on paper:
- How many dollars of death benefit does one unit buy, for my age, in my state?
- How many units am I buying, and what is the total cost each time I pay?
- Is there a limited benefit period, and how long does it run?
- Does the cost stay level, or does it rise as I get older?
Multiply the first two together and you have the number that matters: total coverage against total cost. Compare that against another policy only once you have the third answer as well — a policy that pays in full from day one and a policy that waits two years are not the same product, whatever the totals say.
What the coverage has to cover
The National Funeral Directors Association's 2023 General Price List Study, released 8 December 2023, put the median funeral with viewing and burial at $8,300 and a cremation with viewing at $6,280. Neither figure includes the cemetery plot, the grave marker, or cash-advance items such as flowers and the obituary, and both are 2023 figures. NFDA news release, 8 December 2023.
A separate NFDA publication, its 2025 Cremation & Burial Report, puts the US cremation rate at 63.4%. That report is sold rather than published in full, so the figure is quoted from it and is not linked here.
Set a death benefit against those two figures and the arithmetic does the arguing. A $10,000 policy covers a cremation with money left over; it covers a burial only until the plot and the marker are added. That is the number worth deciding first, because everything else on this page is priced against it.
Where this leaves you
Unit-priced coverage is not a trick. For a buyer who cannot answer health questions and wants a small, fixed monthly cost, it does a real job. The trouble is that the advertised number describes the payment rather than the protection, and the buyer compares payments across products that are not alike.
An independent agent can put the unit math next to a fully priced policy from a different carrier and let you see both totals at once. That is a fifteen-minute call at no charge to you — we are paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us, never by you.
Talk to someone independent
Direct Life Advisors is an independent agency with 52 carrier relationships. A licensed agent will read the contract with you — the product name, the face amount, and whether a limited benefit period applies — and tell you what it means. At no charge to you. We're paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.