I just finished paying my life insurance premium and I can't say that I was all that excited about it.
A friend of mine once told me that he feels good when he pays because it means that he is taking care of his family, but that doesn't work for me.
Sure, if I drop dead or get hit by a bus the family won't find themselves out on the street, but that doesn't provide me with much solace. I have far too much to do to die today, tomorrow, next week or in ten years. Although I should add that there are moments where I wonder about it.
It is one of the great contradictions of my life. Most of the time I expect that I am going to outlive almost everyone I know, but some days I have this sinking feeling. Some days I have this pit in my stomach and I wonder if I'll make it to 50.
Anyway, as I paid the bill I realize that I should have bought more than I did. But way back in 2002 I had fewer children and fewer responsibilities. At the time I thought that it was a decent amount. I figured that if something happened the family would get enough to keep them going, but not so much that the wife could retire. ;)
Now I look at the amount and I think that like so many other things in my life it just doesn't seem like enough. I think that I may give my agent a call and find out what I need to do to increase it to a more reasonable level.
Oh the joys of responsibility.
8 comments:
We upped ours a few years ago. I was pissed that my husband, who is five years older than me, got a better rate than I did. I hate having the actuaries tell my fortune and determine I'm a bad risk.
Those actuaries are lovely people.
Check out some of those financial books. There is a sound reason for saving the money yourself and not paying life insurance. My grandparents and my parents did not, but I was not the saver the rest of the family was, so I purchased life insurance. And, like you it does not make me happy to write out that check.
I tend to lean towards having it. I don't like the premium, but it is not all that much money over the long term.
I don't like the premiums either...but my Grandfather died two months after deciding he couldn't afford life insurance any more, leaving behind a 27-year old widow and two small children, in 1949. Ugh. It took my Grandmother years to pay off his funeral, and she lost custody of her kids for a few years so she could work, which was NOT easy. Thank goodness she remarried someone who had some money and wanted her children, but what a position to be in.
So the decision to have life insurance is a very emotional one for me, and I tend to max out and pay too much, in a superstitious way.
I'm working this out now. I have insurance through my job, but the rates increase every 5 years (yet the payout decreases a bit). If I buy term insurance, the rates and the payout are the same. Need to figure out all the math to make it work, but it's not fun to consider it all.
It took my Grandmother years to pay off his funeral, and she lost custody of her kids for a few years so she could work, which was NOT easy.
Oy, that must have been very hard.
JDMD,
It is a pain, but a necessary one.
Gosh J, my husband's father died when my husband was 4 years old and his mom also lost her children, who were placed in a convent orphanage while she worked three jobs, trying to get enough money to bring them home.
My father also lost his father at a young age. It plunged the family into poverty.
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