My current job asked if I wanted to purchase life insurance, I was 29 at the time I thought they were joking. The very good salesmen from the insurance company asked if I owned a home (I did), and if I had children (I do). He then said life insurance is to protect people like me, not older people with a home paid off and kids grown and gone. My income makes it possible for my family to keep the house and my child to do her hobbies, did I want them to have to make sacrifices on top of dealing with my death. Needless to say, I bought some life insurance. My family will not be rich if I die, but the house will be paid off, my funeral paid for, and some money for my daughter’s future will be set aside.
I chose the simple no money accrued option that was cheap and easy to understand- it is under $5 a month through my job. I do not think I will die anytime soon, but I doubt most people outside of the chronically ill guess correctly. As I set this up, I had to choose beneficiaries for the insurance. Obviously my husband was the first choice, but I needed a second one as well and my daughter was 3 at the time so I needed a guardian for her. This raised more questions about if my husband and I died together who would take our daughter? These were grisly thoughts for a Tuesday afternoon. We made a short list of family members, and then debated it, then called and asked if they were okay with the potential responsibility. So we got a few verbal commitments and went 3 deep on our “death bench” as we referred to it.
Someone then told us to make a will and make it formal; with no will if we died together our daughter would go to foster care while our families explained our wishes. That is not an option I care to entertain. So we made a will that was so generic it was almost comical that referenced our wishes for our daughter. It was not sufficient according to a friend that happened to be a lawyer. I went to legalzoom.com and bought a will template. We pondered our home, our assets, and our daughter and wrote it all out. We had it notarized at our bank and tossed it into our box of important documents. Then went and had drinks. No one likes to think of these things, but honestly I could not stand the idea of my family having to figure it all out on top of the grief.
All told it took an afternoon to plan and now it is all there in our important box. I told my family where to find the box-just in case, and we can have one less thing to worry about. Honestly at my age the life insurance was less than a single cup of coffee a month. Now that I am in my 30s I have thought about upgrading my life insurance and doing some of the fancier options with cash out options, but I have not yet. It is a bit depressing and confusing to think about so I will probably wait until open enrollment in fall to handle this potential change. Get the basics in place as soon as possible, if you are single and rent with no real possessions, then neither are needed for you yet.