Injury or sickness
Insurance is an interesting thing. The stories you do hear about it are typically the bad ones. The good ones are staged by life insurance companies so inherently biased. Have you ever wondered why? In my experience life and critical illness insurance are one of the most important things to have in place to protect your wealth and the well-being of your family. So why is it that you don’t hear about the amazing impact it has every day in the country on people and their families?
Take a moment and put yourself in the shoes of someone that has received an insurance payout. Your significant other just died. You receive a $1,000,000 cheque. Are you going to start telling everyone how great it was that you had insurance and that you don’t need to worry about money anymore, or at least during the grieving period? No. You’re going to mourn the loss of your partner and you’d likely rather have them back than the money. There is nothing you could possibly say that would be interpreted positively associating death with the receipt of money in our culture. Thus the insurance salesperson stigma.
The other thing interesting about insurance is that the best time to buy it is when you think you have absolutely no use for it. That’s when it will be the cheapest it will ever be. That’s when you’ll have the highest likelihood of getting approved. That’s when you should buy it but it’s really difficult to pay for something that you’re not seeing an immediate value in.
I’ve always found it much easier to stomach insurance premiums when you have a plan in place. When you understand what you’re protecting, why, and the alternative… the value represents itself immediately. After that, you avoid the icky feeling of being sold something you didn’t want. For example: You’ve just graduated and are now working and earning an income. You have a goal to save a down payment for a home, maybe one day have kids, travel the world, lots of options but you do know that you’d like kids one day and want to buy a home. Even with just that information we can start thinking about things like what would happen if you have $10,000 saved so far towards a down payment and you’re diagnosed with Cancer but have a high likelihood of beating it? Now there is a real value on that $100,000 of Critical Illness insurance that will cost you $30/month. Now you’re not looking at $30/month, you’re looking at protecting your life plan. Now you know you can take a year or two off work without going into debt, potentially fund private care, beat it, and still have your $10,000 saved. If there is money left over from the payout you, now have your the down payment on your home too. Contrast that with the alternative for $30/month and it seems insane not to have it.
Point being insurance is a hard thing to pay for when you can’t see the value in it. It’s hard to see the value in it if you don’t have a plan. Invest the time early on in your life and meet with a professional to create a plan so that it can give you the perspective you need to stomach paying for insurance. The earlier you do that the cheaper it will be.
I promise you that there will be a point in your life where you panic and learn you need insurance. I hope that you will qualify for it or that it won’t be obscenely expensive if you’ve waited to buy it until you feel you need it.