Immortality Doesn’t Strike Again!

Each day brings another reason to be more impressed by just how stupid the majority of men are. If you’re a guy and don’t want to hear this, let your wife read it. Women get this stuff.

I just talked to an agent friend of mine who worked with a client last year to increase the amount of insurance he had. He had $850,000 in force and because of his success and his young family he felt it would be a good idea to increase his coverage to nearly $3,000,000.

The guy had some heart issues and the agent properly shopped the case given the information provided by his client. The 49 year old guy was looking at about $200 a month for the additional term insurance, hardly a dent in his available income. Once his medical records were reviewed the underwriting decision was that it would cost closer to $300 a month.

Even at $300 a month it was easily budgetable but he decided the underwriters were wrong and instead of putting it in force and seeing if he could change something to get a better rate or find another company that might offer a better rate, he copped an immortal attitude and declined to accept the coverage and dropped the subject.

He just died of a massive heart attack. Hadn’t turned 50 yet. He never really explained to his widow what happened with the additional insurance leaving that job up to my friend, the agent. I’ve had that talk before with a widow who has just had her life turned upside down and then she learns that her husband didn’t want to spend $300 a month to provide the additional $2,000,000 above and beyond what it will take to pay off their mortgage.

I know I’ve beat this study to death, but it so clearly points out the ignorance of putting aside responsibility because “that just doesn’t happen to people our age and it certainly isn’t going to happen to me”.

Bottom line. When it happens to a friend or someone in our family we quick to wonder about the tragedy of it all. It’s time to consider for longer than just a moment the tragedy that your own family would face upon your untimely death.