When you have children your priorities suddenly change.  You now have much more responsibility. As you adjust to life as a new parent you can quickly get bogged down surviving day by day.  It’s tough with the lack of sleep and juggling all the feeds and nappy changes whilst desperately trying to get some sort of routine in place. Even though you’re tired and emotionally drained, it’s important to think about the bigger issues. Such as writing a will and talking about life insurance. It’s quite easy to keep putting off stuff like that off when really it should be a priority!

Worst Case Scenario

Many of us don’t like thinking about worse case scenarios.  When you are young and optimistic you think nothing bad can ever happen to you!!! It’s tough thinking about your own mortality especially if you don’t know anyone who died young. I think for some of us those feelings mean we delay the purchase of family life insurance, but it really shouldn’t.  You do feel a huge sense of relief knowing you have protection in place. You can tick it off your to do list and carry on with making the most out of life.

Financially we would have struggled without both of our incomes.  We might have got behind on our mortgage and risked losing our house.  Bills would have soon built up and we would have found a difficult situation quickly worsen. Heaven forbid anything were to happen to either of us but I like knowing I have adequate cover so either of us could manage with a loss of income. My husband is the biggest earner so his income would be the most missed.  But I have the children so he can work.  He would have to find suitable childcare in the school holidays without me and that would require extra money to pay for.

Extra Money Gives you Time to Grieve

It also takes time to start to be able to function when you have lost a big part of your life.  Either of us wouldn’t want to feel like we had to rush straight back to work so having family life insurance means if needed we could return when we felt ready. We would want to be around to support our children.  Help them come to terms with the loss, we wouldn’t want to be panicking about making ends meet.

On top of the loss of income you have a funeral to arrange and that can be very expensive. You’re already grieving you don’t want to be feeling the financial strain on top of everything else. It can be a very painful time.  The last thing you need is the worry about getting into more debt to pay for a grave site, a headstone and flowers.

When thinking about buying life insurance do first check if you have any provided through your current job.  Although you might find the amount they pay out is not sufficient when you have a family to support so it is worth topping it up with your own policy.

What surprises me most is people who grumble they have paid into a life insurance policy and never claimed on it so have nothing to show for the money they invested.  I for one would be hugely relieved and grateful I survived so wouldn’t see it as an issue! I like paying my monthly installments for peace of mind. So do consider the reasons you want to purchase life insurance.

Now I have got you talking about life insurance, its time to think about when is the best time to buy life insurance? My answer would be straight away! As you get older it can become more expensive so once you start a family it should become your primary concern.