It’s been a rough week for me, but not as hard as it’s been for some friends of mine. I’m not an emotional person; in fact, my wife says my tear ducts must have been surgically removed at birth. But, it was an emotional week. You see, I lost a friend last week at the way too young age of 39. He left behind a beautiful wife and two cute girls he adores. I miss him, a lot.
I was shocked by this, and it took me a few days to process it. Why am I writing about this on a financial blog? Because I had done a really good analysis with him over a year ago, and we put some term insurance on his life and had a financial plan going with him. He got a little tight on finances, and he let it lapse late last year, and about three weeks before he passed, we had lunch and I talked to him about getting insurance active again, but it didn’t happen. He was a good man and had great intentions and loved his family, but who could ever guess something like that would happen?
I’m still sick about it. If you know me, I’m pretty low key, and while I do sell some financial products, I’m not a gold chain wearing salesman about it. I don’t push, I persuade and teach, and the products I sell correspond to the financial principles upon which I build my own financial future. But, I think I'm going to change my approach. I don’t want to see this happen to a friend/client/family member of mine again.
Please, if you don’t have life insurance now, and you have a family, with all the energy I have, I’m begging you to look into it. I have an easy Excel calculator on my website that can help you figure out how much insurance you need. It’s located here: http://www.totalfinancialhealth.com/products/.
I have been doing this for going on 15 years now, and I’ve never seen term life insurance so cheap. I quoted a healthy 30 year old friend of mine the other day for a 10 year term policy with a $500,000 death benefit at $17.72 a month. So cheap! But, so important. Can you imagine how much freedom you can provide for a family you leave behind in the case of a tragedy like I described above? If you’re not the breadwinner in the family, are you secure in that if your breadwinner were taken away suddenly, you would get by easily?
Please, if this blog post can at least get you thinking, just look into it. It should be a greater priority than you think, because the future is unknown. This way, you can bring some certainty into your life. I’m not doing this to make a ton of money. Term policies make up about 5% of my income, so it’s not a big deal for me, but seeing what I saw this past week won’t happen again. If you know me, and you’re a friend, family member, client, etc., of mine, and I find out you have no life insurance and you have a family, I’m going to push you from now on. I’ll hound and not sit still until you do. So, I apologize in advance, but you’ll thank me some day.