Protection products, such as life cover, critical illness cover and income protection, are one of the easiest things in the world for some people to convince themselves they don’t need. The usual reasons are, ‘it won’t happen to us’, or ‘we will have to just move back in with our parents’, or my personal favourite ‘if anything happens to me, she’s a good catch, she will find somebody else’. Although we would all like to think our partners would be ok eventually, there is going to be a length of time when they wouldn’t be and we need to make sure we put things in place for that already difficult time.
Protection against yourself and your own health can be the last thing we like to think about. We can all imagine the despair we would go through if we lost our mobile phone or spilt coffee on our laptop, but we don’t like to think about the consequences on our household if we were to become sick or die. If you were to list all of the things you could and maybe do insure against, such as; your home, boiler, laptop, mobile phone, television, sofa, ipad, car or your income sources. Then ask yourself which of these things can you not bare to live without most? The answer is always going to be your income sources, because without that you can’t have any of the other necessities or luxuries at all.
Since the PPI scandal, there has been a shadow cast over the protection market, and the wrongdoings of the banks have allowed people to convince themselves that all insurance products are bad. They aren’t, and we need to collectively get out of this frame of mind, or we face a country in the future which is full of families that are needlessly thrown in to poverty. We can all take steps to prevent our families from this and if it helps you can compare the monthly cost to things as little as a portion of fish and chips, a few pints of beer, or going out for a cup of coffee every week.
We all want to say we look after our partners and our families, and there aren’t many better ways than to protect them financially. Gone are the days when we can say we look after them by standing outside our cave and scaring off intruders. No longer do we bring home the bacon by going out and hunting a wild pig for them to eat. The place where we fit in now, is making sure the money keeps coming in, no matter what happens to us. The way to do that is to work hard while we are here and we are healthy, and protect them against times when we might not be by taking out the appropriate insurances.
Kieron Bassett Financial Services has two Independent Financial Advisers who specialise in mortgages and investment advice. Contact us on (01524) 832057, via e-mail, info@kieronbassett.com, or visit www.kieronbassett.com.
Jason Hinde CertPFS
12th May 2014
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