The recent U.S. government rescue of leading insurer AIG should serve as a reminder of how important the strength of your life insurance company is.

Largely because of AIG's monumental size and wide-reaching business, the U.S. government agreed to bail out AIG. But as Uncle Sam made different decisions on whether to rescue brokerage firms, so might it differ on whether to use U.S. tax dollars to support future troubled insurance companies.

Even if the government doesn't step in, you have a certain amount of coverage guaranteed by your state. State laws vary, but nationally, the most they'll typically cover is $300,000 in life insurance and death benefits, $100,000 each in cash surrender or withdrawal value for life insurance; withdrawal and cash values for annuities; and health insurance policy benefits.

Nevertheless, conservative should be the name of the game when you buy life insurance.

First, be sure an insurance company is licensed by your state and check with the state for complaints against it.

It's important to check an insurance company's rating. The strongest insurance companies are rated A++ by A.M. Best and AAA by Standard & Poor's. But consider that rating agencies may be paid by the insurers for ratings, and if they're not public companies, may provide data they wish directly.

Also, with life insurance, you need to pay particular attention to your salesperson and take a close look at your life insurance policy illustration -- before you buy.

The illustration is supposed to show you the annual premiums you pay, your death benefit coverage and how your cash value grows over time.

But it's easy to make numbers look significantly better in a hypothetical illustration by pressing a couple of keys on the computer.

Right now, for example, we're in a very low-interest-rate environment. So you should be examining how much your cash value grows at 0 percent to 5 percent interest rates -- and not much higher than those numbers.

A reputable insurance agent will show you policy illustrations that reveal the following:

• The rate the insurance company guarantees it will pay you on your cash value over the years -- regardless of what happens in the financial markets.

• What a policy would be worth if interest remains the same.

• What a policy would be worth if interest rates drop from that point or rise from that point.

Here are just a few tactics that may serve as clues that your life insurance illustration may be out of whack.

• Be suspicious if an illustration bases its assumptions on high interest rates when, for example, banks are paying less than 4 percent on a one-year bank certificate of deposit.

• Ask your agent whether mortality assumptions and fees are exact. If these are adjusted as little as 10 percent in an illustration, it can look like your cash value, or savings portion of the policy, is growing much faster than it really is.

• The illustration may be based on the company holding back attribution of your policy's cash value. If it is held back for two years, for example, that can show greater build-up later on in your policy value than you might actually realize.

These tactics, or a combination, can really put some sizzle in the illustration, making a policy look significantly better than it is.

To avoid being tricked, it's always best to compare illustrations of several life insurance companies for the same coverage. Make sure assumptions are conservative.