Life Insurance: For Those Left Behind
By Eric Rucker on The Capital
What is more unsettling than the unknown? A frontier unexplored, waters uncharted. In this case, if you’re alive, you’ve never been and the dead they never tell. Death is a great unknown and when it comes to Life Insurance this unknown causes many to leave their families vulnerable to their deaths.
What is Life Insurance? “It’s insurance for when I die” might be the answer. But what it is, is a means to go on for those who are left behind. It is not what it can do for you singular, it is what you can do for your family.
When considering how much Life Insurance you need to protect your family, there are mainly four areas you should consider. Loans, Income Replacement, Funeral, and Other Expenses.
Loans
How many loans do you currently have? How many loans would your family still be obligated to pay in your absence?
Consider car loans, you do not want to leave your family with an unmanageable car loan, which then results in a repossession, which handicaps your family’s ability to get where they need to go.
Then there are mortgage loans. For a lot of people, their home is their most prized possession. This may be the biggest purchase they make in their lifetime, it is where you will raise your children, it is where you will host friends and it will hold a wealth of memories in each room, but what if you die unexpectedly? Do you want your family to lose their home full of memories? Without Life Insurance, a difficult situation will become worse if your family can no longer afford their home, once you are gone.
Credit allows us to make purchases when we don’t have the cash on hand through loans and when used correctly it can be leveraged to obtain assets that improve our lives. Life Insurance will ensure that credit does not come back to bite you, by allowing you to provide a way for your family to continue paying their debts. Keeping what belongs to the family, in the family.
Income
Also consider, where your household income comes from. Are you the main source of income? Do you share income responsibilities with your spouse or significant other? What income would be lost if you die prematurely?
In a single-income household consider, how soon do you want your significant other to have to start working? No insurance, they would have to begin looking for employment immediately, this would not give them time to grieve. A lot of stress can be avoided if they have the cushion of Life Insurance.
In a two-income household, the income left behind does still have the means to pay some of the bills but they most likely would not have the ability to pay all of the bills. Do you want your family to have to give up your home? What about their cars? What about their hobbies, piano lessons, dancing lessons, youth sports, vacations, etc. Life Insurance is the cushion that will soften the blow of your absence by providing for your family as you would have if you were there.
Life Insurance gives your family time to plan and take action. Instead of having to make decisions unprepared and under pressure due to your unexpected death.
Funeral
Funerals are for closure. They allow your family to grieve and cherish your memory with those whose lives you have touched. Funerals can cost upwards of $10,000 and can be a big financial strain on your loved ones during their time of loss if you did not have a Life Insurance policy.
Life Insurance allows your family to celebrate your life as they desire. They can gain closure before they begin the healing process and life without you. You do not want them to have to live with the memory of not being able to honor you as they wanted because they could not afford the costs of your funeral.
Other Expenses
Lastly, this section is for you. What do you want to provide for in the event of your death? Maybe you want to take care of your children’s college fund or buy them their first car.
Maybe you want to take care of retirement funds for your spouse or significant other. Ensuring that they will be well taken care of and able to enjoy their ‘Golden Years’ without having to work.
In the end, you know your family and what they have, need, and desire. Maybe you are even planning to provide those things to them right now, but what if you die before you get there? Life Insurance will make sure that you are still able to provide those things to your family even if you are not there to give it to them. They will know it came from you, from your foresight, and that will be a memory for them to cherish.
Time To Decide
What is your family worth to you? Do you still want to provide for them even in your absence? Death will come for us all, the best thing we can do for those left behind, is to position them to continue their lives with as little pain as possible. They will be comforted knowing that even in death you thought of them and did what you could to provide for them. Life Insurance is not for you, it is for your family and those left behind.
