3 Possibilities and 3 Things to Consider

3 Possibilities and 3 Things to Consider

In the span of someone’s life, there are 3 possibilities that can take place.  We can either die young, get hurt or get sick or we end up living a long and healthy life.  There is no way to predict what might or might not happen in the future but there are ways to hedge risk and plan for the unknown future.

Die Young

If we die young, we need life insurance in place to protect our family, inner circle or whoever you might have invited to be part of your life.  Life insurance is about taking care of loved ones.  It’s about meeting responsibilities and keeping promises.

Our decision to purchase life insurance comes from our family’s point of view, not our own. Life insurance is a tool that protects our spouses and children from the potentially devastating financial losses that can result if we die prematurely.  We want to ensure the financial security of family members if we are suddenly not around to provide it.

Get Sick or Hurt

If we get sick or get hurt, we are going to need living benefits to help provide money and bridges of capital to replace lost income from not working as well as help pay for increased household expenses and medical bills.  Living benefits is really the next evolution of life insurance because living benefit pays out a portion of your life policy while you are still alive if you ever face a terminal, critical or chronic illness. 

You may access living benefits when a qualifying life event occurs which then creates coverage and needed cash to cover medical expenses, debt and more arising during times of medical events like heart attack, stroke, cancer, disability, etc.  The living benefits of life insurance can help provide additional layers of protection and is just one more way life insurance helps protect what matters most. 

Live Long Healthy Life

If we live a long healthy life, that is a great gift and blessing, but we will need money to cover the retirement years.  Physical and mental health are great but so is financial health and a lack of financial health can cause havoc on other wellness areas and disrupt our lives and our overall health in a negative way.  Learn the retirement mistakes to avoid now or regret later.  If we want our money to last as long as we do, we need to under and consider the risks of time, taxes and market risk.

Time works both ways.  How long do we need to work before we are able to comfortably retire according to our projected standard of living?  Then, how long is our money going to last?  The second answer needs to be the rest of the lifetime. 

Next is taxes.  Both the tax environment and the individual tax status are important.  If we overlook the impact of taxes on your expected retirement, the retirement dream could turn into a nightmare. 

Last is market risk.  We have to understand the impact of market losses in terms of both time and money.  It takes much more than people actually realize to recover from losses. 

So what is someone to do?  We can choose to ignore, eliminate or manage risk.  A plan of action to hedge risks no matter what life has in store is the right approach.  No plan is still a plan, just a plan to fail.  You don’t know what is going to happen but you can create strategies based on possibilities and be prepared for the best or the worst.