I used to have life insurance at my old job, but my new job doesn't provide it. (We do get some token amount, not really much.) Anyway, somehow I dropped the ball and forgot to get life insurance, so at the moment, my life is totally uninsured. My husband does have life insurance, at least more than me, but not as much as he probably ought to have.
I started to panic a little bit about this recently, and I found a broker that was highly recommended to me by someone I trust. The broker gave us some paperwork to fill out, which I have done, but my husband is very reluctant to do this. He feels that we don't need life insurance since one of us dying is very unlikely, and furthermore, he is worried that the broker will share all our personal information.
He quoted:
"One data broker is selling lists of addresses and names of consumers suffering from conditions including cancer, diabetes, and depression, and the medications used for those conditions; another is offering lists naming consumers, their credit scores, and specific health conditions."
So he doesn't want to get life insurance. But I'm extremely nervous having two small kids and no life insurance. He should probably be even more nervous than me, considering I earn the majority of our income, and the disparity may be even greater in the future since he may switch to an academia career.
What do you think? Can you convince my husband to get life insurance ASAP? Or do you agree with him?
If you can afford it I don't see why you would NOT get life insurance. I cannot get life insurance at all due to being sick. I did get my husband life insurance though. If you are healthy and don't take any prescribed drugs you should get life insurance. What if both of you died? What would happen to your children? Would they be able to live a good life and go to college?
ReplyDeleteBoth of us dying is something I'm less worried about, at least financially. My parents have much, much more money than we do.
DeleteMy personal opinion: not having life insurance is stupid and irresponsible if you have kids. In fact, because of a pre-existing condition that makes life insurance incredibly expensive for me, not having life insurance is one of the reasons I have decided NOT to have kids, because I don't think I can create a suitable financial safety net for them if something were to happen to me.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't think people already know everything about your life, you are kidding yourself.
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/08/medical-information-private-sold-routinely.html
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/patients-sue-walgreens-making-money-their-data
On top of which, Google and Bing are always tracking your every move online, so if you are researching a health condition, they know all about it.
Ask hubby this: what happens if you and hubby are both in a bad car accident. You die, and hubby lives, but cannot return to his job for a year or more due to the severity of his own injuries. Your life insurance would go a very, very long way towards maintaining the stability of your kids' lives while he recuperates. His own disability benefits from his company will only be some percentage of his own salary, which you said is much less than yours. And, those benefits can run out, they usually only go up to 2 years if he has long term disability. If he only has short term disability benefits, those run out after 6 months.
So why not just go ahead and apply for life insurance already?
Get life insurance. Absolutely, You don't need anything fancy, just simple term life.
ReplyDeleteYou have to say why though :) Bc it's pretty unlikely one of us would die.
DeleteThe whole purpose of having any form of insurance is to protect against things that are unlikely to happen but would be catastrophic if they did. Houses are unlikely to burn down, but we still get fire insurance. You work in medicine, so you know that young healthy people get sick and die all the time. Like Grumpy said, just get the life insurance.
DeleteConvey to your husband my story:
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 40 yrs old, I was beginning to accumulate enough savings to discuss long-range financial planning with a certified financial planner, who highly suggested supplementing the life insurance provided by my employer (not much, like 1-2 times my annual salary). I contacted an insurance broker and signed up for two 20-yr term policies through two different companies for a total coverage of about 10-15 times my annual salary with a monthly cost of about 2 hrs of my hourly pay rate.
At the time I was very healthy, and with a science PhD was well-paid. My spouse was a stay-at-home mom raising our three kids, all in elementary or middle school at the time.
Three years later, I was diagnosed with a stage 3 solid carcinoma. At the time, we had a little savings, a little equity in the house, a little 401K, a little 529 plan, and a little debt. A little.
It is impossible to express how comforting it was to not have to worry about my family not to be provided for in case things didn’t work out. Sure, my wife would have had to go back to work making a quarter of what my salary was, but it wouldn’t have to be right away and maybe not forever depending on how well the bulk was invested. The kids would be taken care of, including a state university, the house could have been paid off, and they wouldn’t have had to move back in with the crazy side of the family.
It also comforts me now, 7 yrs later, that if I happen to get hit by a bus, or have a coronary event, or god knows what, that things can continue to go on as normal.(Yes, chemo, radiation, surgery, and chemo took care of the tumor; I’m one of the good stories.)
For both of you, I highly recommend getting an appropriate amount of insurance for your situation as early as possible and while you are very healthy, as it is much cheaper.
I enjoy the blog (in addition to Dr. Grumpy and The Things Patients Say). Still glad I didn’t go to med school.
My brother in-law had a brain aneurysm collapsed and died one day just shy of his 30th birthday. He did not have life insurance because he did not have dependents but his death was a financial burden to my in-laws just to tie everything up.
ReplyDeleteHe was heathy and ran every day and was going to get married in Hawaii in less than year. There are no guarantees about how long we get to be here. Leaving your spouse and kids financially unstable when it is a cheap fix is just dumb. We all have to admit lightning can strike even if we choose not to think about it every day.
Purchasing insurance is the only time I hope I'm wasting my money. I hope I'll never need any of my insurance, especially life insurance, but if I do need it I'll be so so glad it is there. Yes, it is unlikely that you'll need it. But even if the chances of you dying were 1/100,000,000, SOMEONE has to be that 1. Could be you.
ReplyDeleteHow much did you get? I need to buy some for myself, and don't know what the right amount is.
ReplyDeleteFizzy, it is very likely that both of you will die. When is the question. We have no kids, but as a minimum we have enough term insurance to give the other person a year to get things in order after the demise of one of us. We depend on our dual income to maintain our less than extravagant lifestyle. We are both over sixty and only two weeks ago lost three friends within a week's time. Only one of those was unexpected.
ReplyDeleteYou need life insurance because people who are unlikely to die pass away every single day. My cousin’s husband was 40 years old with no apparent medical conditions literally dropped dead at work. A few months after he died, my coworker who was 37 weeks pregnant passed in a terrible car crash along with her unborn child. In the latter case, she only had the insurance through the job which wasn’t much and the family had to also bury the child, so you just never know. I agree with others that it is pretty irresponsible to not have life insurance. In fact, you guys should have been discussing this after you got married, especially since you can get a term policy for so cheap. I’m 31, healthy, single, I don’t have any children and even I have a policy. My policy is less than $20 a month. That is a small amount compared to the financial burden my family would be left with if something happened to me. You also need to consider getting life insurance for your children as well.
ReplyDeleteMy It is certainly unlikely that you or your husband, as young and apparently healthy people, will die anytime soon. But horrible and unexpected things happen every day. My father died of a sudden massive heart attack at age 40. My brother and I were 9 and 11 at the time. My mother had no education past high school and hadn't worked since I was born. Thank God my father had a good life insurance policy. It paid off the mortgage on my parents' house and between life insurance and Social Security survivors' benefits, my mother was able to go back to school to prepare for a career and we were able to maintain a middle class lifestyle. It allowed my brother and I to have a very normal adolescence with as little disruption to our lives as possible. We weren't wealthy by any means, but we had everything we needed and most of the things we wanted.
ReplyDeleteThe loss of a spouse/parent is hard. Really, really hard. Life insurance just makes it so it's not any harder than it has to be.
I agree with your husband. If your parents have enough money to take care of the children in the event that either you, your husband or both of you die, don't bother to purchase life insurance. You don't need it.
ReplyDeleteAs the person noted below, it's not my parents' responsibility to take care of my husband and grandchildren if I died (they are well off but hardly rich), and I know he'd hate to have to take money from them or ask them for it. Nobody wants to have to rely on their parents (or in-laws) for money as an adult.
DeleteYou said your parents have much, much more money than you and your husband do, so you aren't too concerned about what would happen if both of you were to die. I suppose your parents could decline to raise your children and they could end up in foster care, but that could happen if all four of you died and no one else in your family or circle of friends wanted to raise the kids.
DeleteIf you die, your kids and husband shouldn't have to rely upon your parents at all, because it sounds like you plan to get life insurance.
If your husband dies without adequate life insurance, that becomes your problem. You can then decide whether you want to ask your parents for money or not.
I still agree with your husband. If he dies, you were making more money than he was anyhow and shouldn't have to rely on your parents regardless.
I don't want to be dependent on my parents for money either. And without my husband's help with childcare, my expenses would be higher. Also, god knows what expenses might be incurred during the tragedy that took my husband's life. Plus I doubt that I'd be able to jump right back into work after something like that... I'm sure I'd be very sad for a long time and might have to take a long unpaid leave. Or switch jobs to be closer to family. Leaving me to fend for myself without any financial cushion, dependent on the goodwill of my parents, is sort of inconsiderate.
DeleteIf you think your husband is inconsiderate, tell him so. I'm sure that argument will convince him.
DeleteWhy did you make children with this man? (A rhetorical question, since you can't undo it now.)
Uh, ok. Not a productive response.
DeleteI still agree with your husband. The only reason he needs to get life insurance for himself is to placate you. If he were to die, you and the kids would be able to survive on your salary alone. This would be more difficult, and you don't like it. That's your problem.
DeleteLife insurance and long term disability insurance are vital, especially if you have dependents.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Anonymous 10:10, since it's not your parents' responsibility to take care of a surviving spouse and grandchildren. They might do it, but it's not their responsibility, and shouldn't be.
It's like $30 a month for a $500,000 policy, you have kids. I say get an investment life insurance so you can get your $$ back when you retire
ReplyDeleteGet term. The investment price is overpriced-- you'd be better off putting that additional money in a traditional savings vehicle that has lower fees. Use insurance for insurance, not as an investment.
DeleteWhat if your parents, as they age, get into a car accident and severely injure someone? All their money will be used up paying for that accident. My uncle, in his 50s, passed out while driving, hit three brand new cars and ended up bashing in the wall of someone's garage. They owed something like 70k after insurance.
ReplyDeleteThere's no guarantee your parents will be physically or financially able to help you guys out
I would definitely buy life insurance. I wish I did, but I became permanently disabled at 22 and I can't buy it now.
"One of us dying is very unlikely...." Well, I guess if he has guaranteed immortality on earth, life insurance is a stupid decision. :-) But "very unlikely" is not "completely impossible."
ReplyDeleteAs to the data brokers - yeah, probably. But his info has most likely already been sold; I mean, you and he have have other insurance - car, renters' right? - and regularly use credit cards, and rent a house, and have to pay bills and have social security cards. So it can't get even more lost.
Also, you have to pay more the older you get for life insurance.
And let's consider some scare stories:
Pt A - wonderful young man, just married. Weird bump on hip turned out to be stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma. Hemipelvectomy. Now dead. Bereaved widow.
Pt B - lovely woman, calm, one of the nicest people I've met. Advanced lymphoma. Diagnosed as she entered the SICU. Now dead. Grieving parents, husband, and kids.
Pts C, D, E and F - MVC. Two DOA. Two class A ex-laps. One made it to the SICU, only to die two months later. The other didn't make it to the SICU.
Pt G - Pedestrian struck by car. Broken vertebrae, paralyzed. Succumbed to respiratory infection.
Pt H - Young lady, just had a kid. Found a funny nevus...Stage "F" melanoma. Still living (s/p huge resection surgeries), but will be dead in months, I'd bet.
Pt I - Working on a gas tank. Exploded. He died, wife survived (50% TBSA burns, though).
Pt J - Another beautiful young woman. Few cm mass on thigh. Primary care doc thought it was a fibroma. It wasn't. Sarcoma. Horrible mets throughout abdomen, bowels. Died a very painful, protracted death.
Saw all of these in the last six months.
Ask him to go spend some time in heme-onc. Have him tell all the people there how cancer is very unlikely to happen to him. Or have him go to the SICU, tell those patients that a car accident as a driver, passenger or pedestrian is very unlikely to happen to him. Or go to any burn center and let him say that it is very unlikely that a car would explode on him, or a candle would turn over in the night, or there would be any electrical malfunction in his house. Let him go to Englewood, Chicago and say how unlikely it is he'll be mugged or caught in some deal gone wrong. Or let him travel to NYC, Lockerbie, OKC, Colorado, Woolwich UK, or North Ireland and say how unlikely it is he'll ever be caught by an act of terror. Or let him travel to the Philippines, or the US tornado alley, or along the major fault lines, or Indonesia, or pretty much anywhere in the world and say that it is very unlikely that he would ever be caught in a major natural disaster that would happen while he were at home or traveling for work or pleasure. Because is it unlikely? Statistically speaking, yeah, very. Most likely, he'll die at 75 or so of heart disease. But is it improbable? No.
~Jasmine
You should still convince him to get a life insurance policy. Most of us think that getting life insurance while we're young and energetic is a waste of money. However, we don't consider the idea of getting terminally ill after a year, or getting into a life changing accident. We have to prepare ourselves, as well as our family, for the life they have to face when we die unexpectedly. I know he will understand the situation as long as you explain the importance of having life insurance. – Mary
ReplyDeleteI am a resident and insured for $1 million on a thirty year policy. Hopefully, by the time I am 60, our kids will be financially independent and we'll have enough in savings to exist without my income. My policy is fairly cheap.
ReplyDelete