It Can Happen to You

It Can Happen to You

By Jeff Rose

It’s one of those things that you think will never happen to you.

To walk into the kitchen and find the love of your life lying lifeless on the floor; dead on the cold kitchen tile.

It’s been over three years since I heard this story. A fresh widow sitting in my office clenching the box of tissues that I offered her, sharing her sad story with me.

She had been married to her husband for more than 20 years. They had two wonderful kids and loved spending each day with each other.

The Family Man

The husband was a hard worker. He loved his family and gave each day his all. He had no preexisting conditions. As a doctor himself, he was very conscious of his health and took care of himself.

Stories like this happen more often than we want to believe. You see it in the news, you see it in blogs, you even hear about it on Oprah.

Some of us are lucky. We never have to experience the heartache of losing a loved one before it was time for them to go. I can only imagine how hard it is for someone to go through that. And there is no hiding the pain that I saw in her eyes. But as I mentioned, the husband loved his wife and loved his family and made sure that they were protected.

He did this by taking out a very large life insurance policy.

Having to deal with the pain of losing her husband was hard enough. If she would have had to worry about where her next paycheck was going to come from now that her husband, who was the clear breadwinner of the two, was gone, I think it would have broken her. Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry.

She didn’t have to worry at all.

The husband had realized how inexpensive term life insurance was and bought a lot of it. With the amount of life insurance that her husband had thoughtfully taken out on himself, she and the kids were set.

She wouldn’t have to work again.

Her kids could continue to go to the colleges that they wanted. The family, even without their dad and husband, would be okay financially.

It’s been three years since that unfortunate day, and having a review meeting with that client, she reinforced how thankful she was that her husband had had the foresight to buy the life insurance. She sat in my office and said, “Had he not bought that [life insurance], I have no idea what I would have done.”

So many people don’t feel the need to buy life insurance. In fact, over one-third of the U.S. population has no life insurance in their households whatsoever.

Life insurance is cheap. Life insurance is easy; it literally takes you less than 10 minutes to get a quote. I know because I did it myself. And if you haven’t, you need to.

Don’t you want to leave your loved ones with the financial means to continue without worry if you should leave them before you expect to go?

What are you waiting for?

This is a guest post by Jeff Rose, a Certified Financial Planner and Iraqi combat veteran. He blogs at Good Financial Cents, Soldier of Finance and Life Insurance By Jeff.
Fuente: The LIFE Foundation, 03/08/12.
Más información en: www.lifehappens.org