CHAPTER 6
The Gift of Security
LIFE INSURANCE
You don’t even want to read this chapter, do you? I say life insurance, and you immediately get a picture of someone in a plaid short-sleeved shirt accented with a squared-end tie and maybe even a brown corduroy jacket with the elbow pads and a serious comb-over. You picture someone sitting across the kitchen table launching a guilt blitzkrieg with a hefty price tag in your direction. You picture someone who has as much conflict of interest as the hungry lion circling the wounded wildebeest on a National Geographic show.
Life Insurance: Why?
You may be partly right, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the duty of properly managing the financial risk associated with death. There are certainly times when properly managing risk warrants or even mandates the transfer of that risk with—you guessed it—life insurance. If you are already financially independent, you have self-insured the financial risk that you might die prematurely. However, if you are a young parent with a good income but not enough saved to keep paying the bills indefinitely if you leave this earth, you need to purchase some life insurance. We will give you the guidelines required to begin making this decision.
Ultimate Advice
As Red Stevens learned in “The Gift of a Day” in The Ultimate Gift, discussions of financial protection from death need not be a morbid topic, but can instead lead us to life-giving discussions and decisions.
It is not easy to talk about life insurance ...
