Life insurance is all about giving the people you care about the most financial security if you are no longer alive to support them. In essence, if you die, your loved one receives a lump sum benefit, which ideally would be used for them to continue living the way you want them to.
Life insurance is perhaps the simplest of all the personal risk insurances we put in place. It’s really quite simple, and not too many grey areas, ‘if you are dead you are dead’. We have all seen the figures, and we know the worst can happen, and perhaps its more a matter of when it will happen, or timing, as eventually we all take our part in the overall life & death cycle. The problem is knowing when, and the simple fact is we usually don’t know when our time is up. If you took a survey from the obituaries column from the local paper, I bet most people would not have thought it was their time.
As we move through life our circumstances change, our jobs and incomes may vary usually increasing with age and experience, we may build and sell businesses, we hopefully build an asset base for retirment, and will have varying amounts of debts during our lifetime. We have children (dependants) but then our kids grow up, and are hopefully no longer dependant, and even this now varies with each individual family with kids now spending longer and longer periods living at home, especially while educating themselves. During our lives, all these factors come into play, and one of our main aims is to help you assess the appropriate level of insurance for your given circumstance at the time. This of course varies with each and every family, and every individual, and really comes down to what is important to you ie your priorities.
Having the right level of cover ensures your family could survive without you. The benefit payment can be used however your beneficiaries chose to do so, and usually factor in some of the the following typical expenses; mortgage repayments, day to day expenses, children’s future, retirement protection and funeral & related expenses. A big part of the initial puzzle, is it to get to know you, your family and your priorities to then help determine the appropriate levels of cover and the best way to structure the cover.
