Insurance is a tough concept for many
people. Any kind of insurance
including term "" life assurance usually
deals with "bad things" and most
people's brains are trained to block out
bad things. Let's look at how we
can handle some of the risks that life
presents with a handy tool such as term
"" life assurance.
Who
wants to think of a major surgery, their
house burning down, or the death of a
loved one. There's always good
old-fashioned procrastination but the
tendency to put off
purchasing
insurance goes a little
deeper. There's a psychological
"head in the sand" mechanism where a
person's feels that if he/she just
blocks it out of his/her mind, then it
won't happen. Unfortunately,
millions of Americans find out each year
that this approach works as well for us
as it did for the dodo. Risk is an
inherent part of living and
insurance
is there to correctly take the fear off
your mind (rather than just suppressing
it).
Studies have shown that the stress of
small items in the back of a person's
mind can affect their sense of
well-being, stress, and ability to
function well. This can be that
unlocked door at night on the car (good
luck sleeping well once that's in your
mind) to that form you need to fill out
or on to bigger needs such as term ""
life assurance. We all know it's
important to have term life but piece of
mind is one more reason to get it done
and get it done today.
Many
people have a distorted sense of risk or
probability. There's a great book
called the Drunkard's Walk that looks
closely at how our brains constantly
misunderstand probability and risk.
There are different scenario's in which
this applies to our view of insurance.
The first is that a person takes too
rosy a picture in regards to the risk of
passing away during a critical period of
time...say when children are growing up
and depend on that person for financial
well-being. "It won't happen to
me". In some regards they are
correct that the probability is low but
the risk is very high. They are
only looking at one side of the
equation. A more apparent example
is to be afraid of flying on planes but
not afraid of driving a car. The
rare (amazingly so considering the
number of flights each day) plane crash
is horrific. It's splashed across
newspapers around the world and the
brain quickly runs this through the fear
processor of the brain. Low
probability/High risk. On the
other hand, cars "feel" much safer
partly because we're more familiar with
them and because it's possible to
survive a car accident with the modern
safety innovations. But...you
actually a higher probability of dying
in a car accident than in a plane crash.
Why is the perception off? We have
difficulties correctly understanding
probability and risk. We say "I'm
healthy...I don't need health insurance"
or "I'm young...I don't need life
insurance". That's only part of
the equation...
Although the probability of a major
surgery (although on average, a person
will have a major medical bill every 7
years) or passing away during the prime
of your life is low, the risk or outcome
can be financially catastrophic.
You can easily rack up $100's of
thousands in medical bills. If a
primary earner for a family passes away,
it can even be worse with millions of
dollars to replace the lost income.
This is a case of people fixating on the
probability (not likely) but not the
risk (catastrophic outcome).
Insurance is specifically designed to
address this risk. You can learn
more about
how insurance
works to spread this risk but
the key is that you participate by
securing your own term "" life
insurance. Not only will you
protect your loved ones...you just may
sleep a little better.
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