This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, Protective Life. All opinions are mine alone. #iamprotective #CollectiveBias The article I share with you below, is my personal story, how life insurance became an investment in protecting my family’s future.
From the time our first child was born we knew we needed to lead a Protective Life. We chose a top of the line car seat, just to ensure our children were safe at all times. Now that they are older, we still continue to protect them.We make sure our kids put their seat belts on while riding in the car and we’ve even chosen a car that has a good safety star rating with lots of airbags. We even make sure they wear the proper protective gear for the sports they play.
Needless to say, we try and do our best as parents to keep them safe and comfortable.
Then I realized that we worked so hard in protecting them now, but I failed in protecting them for the future.
I’m embarrassed to say that for the first 15 years of our marriage, I couldn’t justify paying for life insurance. You know I’m all about saving money and that is one area we could save on. We were young, young people don’t die. Life Insurance is for old folks and I didn’t want to jinx us. I mean really! How silly was my thinking. I knew young people die, but I still couldn’t bring myself to purchase life insurance. It was something that we just kept putting off.
Thinking about death is scary. No one wants to think about dying. The thought of never seeing my children grow up and the thought about not growing old with my husband brings tears to my eyes every time. I also don’t want to think about my husband dying either. It scares me even more now that I’m a stay at home mom. I’ve been out of the work force for 6 years, I’d have to start all over again.
It wasn’t until we started putting our estate in order, that we really understood the importance of having life insurance. My husbands employer provides 1 year salary for his death, but after paying for funeral expenses I really wouldn’t have much left to live on. We aren’t a wealthy family, we are still building up our retirement income, our savings is minimal and none of that would be enough to care for our family and live the way we do now.
In the event I died before my husband did, he would still have his income to live on. But without me around, he’d have to hire help to assist with our kids. Whether he’d put them into after school care, hire a nanny or so on. His salary covers our current expenses with me being home, not with him having to hire someone else care for our children.
We have mandatory things such as health insurance, home owners insurance and car insurance and because we are “forced” to pay those we don’t think twice about that. But when it comes to having life insurance. We dilly dally around, when we really should think of life insurance as an investment in our family’s future and make it mandatory! I know I’m not the only one that thinks this way. I loved the video on Protective Life of Anthony Anderson sharing how his family made it mandatory too.
The fact is we will die. We assume and hope that it will be when we are old and our children are grown and out of the house. But only God knows when our time will end and I hope he chooses when we’re old and our children are grown. But if he takes us while their young, we want to ensure they will continue to live the way we live today. In order to do that we need to have life insurance and we need to choose the right amount of life insurance that suits our family’s needs.
My husband wants me to be home with our children. He doesn’t want me to be forced to return to work. Therefore we aimed for 10x’s my husbands salary. That amount will give me enough to invest and continue to live the way we live today.
In the event of my death, we aimed for enough life insurance to cover all of our expenses and ensure we had enough money to cover any additional help he may need to care for our children.
We also chose to get life insurance on our children, just enough to cover their funeral expenses.
I share this story with you because September is National Life Insurance Month? I’d love to hear your story. Comment below and share with me what lead you to make life insurance a priority for your family.
Latest posts by Gina Horne (see all)
- 2024 Printable Calendar - December 27, 2023
- Christmas Maze Game – Help Santa - December 2, 2023
- 5 Tips to Prepare for a Debt Free Christmas - December 1, 2023
Leave a Reply