When you think about giving gifts to your loved ones, there’s an excellent chance that you never think of life insurance as a consideration. Even though it’s a financial product, it’s also a gift in the truest sense. Life insurance is your last best gift to your loved ones.
Not sure it’s really a gift? Please reconsider.
You Give All Kinds of Gifts to Your Loved Ones…
It’s likely that the gifts that you give to your family are mostly tangible in nature. This can include toys and electronics for your kids, or jewelry, sporting goods, or more electronics for your spouse. Sometimes the gift might be money, or even financial securities, like stocks or savings bonds. In other times it might be certain events, such as dinner at an expensive restaurant, a trip to an amusement park, or even a family vacation.
Those are all good gifts to give to your loved ones during your lifetime – but that raises an important point. What can you give your family when you are no longer around?
That’s where life insurance enters the picture. Even though it’s not an item that you give someone as a gift in the normal sense of the term, it is a gift nonetheless. When you are no longer around to provide all of those other more traditional gifts, a good life insurance benefit will be your last and ultimate gift.
You Take Care of Your Family While You’re Living – This is Your Chance to Take Care of Them When You Aren’t
If you establish yourself in your career, and your finances are in balance, then you are probably pretty comfortable and confident about your ability to provide a living for your family. You’re able to provide for their needs, and even many of their wants.
But the day may come when you are no longer around to provide all of those benefits. It will certainly help if you leave your family in a strong financial state. That could mean having adequate savings, investments for the future, and low levels of debt.
But once you pass away, there will be financial needs that neither you nor your family could have anticipated in advance. There are many expenses that come with the death of a family breadwinner. Many of those expenses are large enough to substantially weaken even a strong financial profile.
For starters, there are final expenses. This includes funeral expenses and all of the sundry costs that go into it. No matter how much you may instruct your loved ones to handle your funeral arrangements “modestly”, heavy emotions often rule the day. Excess expenses often come as a result of people being under severe emotional distress.
And apart from the funeral, there may be practical day-to-day expenses. This is particularly true if your death is preceded by an extended period of illness or incapacitation, that would lead to loss of wages and incurring large uncovered medical expenses.
There may also be certain debts that exist at the time of your death that your family would be much better off with if they were paid. This can include first and foremost a mortgage on the family home, but can also include student loan debts, car loans, and large credit card balances.
If you have very young children, you may also want to provide additional money that will provide for child care until your children are old enough that it’s no longer necessary. This will give your spouse a better chance to support the family, if there are young children in need of care.
By having all of those expenses paid by a life insurance policy, you will free up other financial resources for the actual support of your family. At a minimum, a life insurance policy should eliminate any extraneous debts that might threaten your family’s survival.
Sparing Your Family Unnecessary Grief
When thinking about the financial aspects for your family following your death, it’s often easy to forget the emotional toll that they will suffer. Losing you will be difficult enough, but if the family is also facing tough financial decisions, their grief will be even worse. It won’t just be that they lost a family member, but it will also become painfully obvious that they lost a provider.
A life insurance policy can provide your family with enough money to allow them to go through the grieving process without added financial pressures.
Earlier we discussed the types of expenses that typically follow a person’s death. That money may be needed for an entirely different purpose as well. While your family is grieving, they may need a financial cushion that will free them up from other concerns.
For example, if both you and your spouse are income earners, it’s entirely possible that your spouse may go through an extended time where he or she is psychologically or emotionally unable to work. If there is no extra money available, it can turn into a disaster. Either your family will sink into a financial disaster, or your spouse will have to work through a very difficult time, without having time to recover.
This is where life insurance truly is a gift. You’re giving your family the gift of time and money to grieve your loss. That cushion could carry them through a very difficult time, enabling them to gain strength to carry forward in life.
A Good Life Insurance Policy Will Be Your Last Chance to Provide for Your Family
No matter how much money you have accumulated in life, and no matter how many gifts you have given your family, a life insurance policy will be your last chance to provide for them. You should think of life insurance as an opportunity to give your family one final gift.
While it won’t be sentimental in any sense, it will be overwhelmingly practical. And where life and death are concerned, practical is entirely desirable. A life insurance policy will enable you to make one more major effort in providing for your family, even though you are no longer around.
You will have an opportunity to do that as long as you are alive and in good health. Think of that as a gift in your own life – and don’t let the moment pass.
