There aren’t many things that people should buy, but hope they never have to use them. A fire extinguisher comes to mind, and maybe a spare tire, but the most important one you can buy (if you are a parent or have folks that rely on you financially) is insurance. The two insurances I think you must consider are:
- Term Life Insurance, for if (God forbid) you pass on leaving your family or loved ones with no means of support. If you are single, insurance may not be that important, but if you earn an income and your family relies on this, then you need to get some TERM insurance (not whole life).
- Disability Insurance, a boss of mine convinced me to get this a few years ago, and it really hit home when a co-worker who seemed very healthy had a stroke, and I realized that kind of catastrophic illness may be worse than die’ing in some ways (financially speaking that is). You are in need of long term medical care, yet you won’t have any income? Holy cow that scares me, just thinking about it.
Why am I writing about this today? My wife has a violent case of stomach flu, and the amount of juggling we have to do just to cover the fact that she is bed ridden, made me think about this very topic (that and the Canadian Capitalist also mentioned it this week too).
The question I always think about for life insurance is: What sort of financial problems would my untimely death cause if I didn’t have life insurance.
Whereas, I probably won’t die for another 40 or so years, how long would it take my spouse to pay for my funeral out of pocket if I did die and she had to pay for my funeral.