Well, when I was a life assurance salesman, many years ago, I would get asked a variation of this question virtually every day. My answer was always the same. I would reply : “If you knew with absolute certainty the day that you were going to die, how much life cover would you buy the day before?”
The answer from clients was always (and I mean always) "as much as I can get". As you can imagine, I was a very successful life assurance salesman and earned a good living with this job!
Anyway, my point is that I understand that we all have priorities in life. Putting bread on the table may be more important right now than having life cover. We have our ambitions, our goals and commitments. We tend to think of life assurance as a luxury item rather than a necessity.
Maybe it is the way we have been programmed by our up-bringing or our environment but somewhere along the way, the need to insure against our demise has become a minor factor in how many of us decide to spend our disposable income, rather than an automatic 'must have' purchase like bread, deodorant or toilet paper.
Consider this: a man aged 35, with small children can purchase low cost life assurance that will pay out enough to put his children through college or university for about the price of a packet of cigarettes each week.
Put another way, for the price of an average bottle of wine each week, a young mother can buy enough low cost life cover to pay for her children to buy a home of their own or at least get on that all important first rung of the property ladder.
Life assurance, Wills, Retirement Planning, where will it end?! I will let you come to your own, inevitable conclusion on that one. I will just input two words into your thought process: life cycle.
I implore you to consider making a small gamble with the best 'bookies' the world has ever known (the insurance companies). I guarantee you that you will never benefit from this sure bet BUT your family, those loved ones that you WILL leave behind, well, they might.
Life assurance is cheap. Pick something you can afford and won't miss. It will be worth it in either piece of mind or real benefits to your family, a win-win situation for sure.
Oh, and ask your financial advisor to donate some of his commission to your kids college fund :)
