Finance Gym's Blog

How to Decide the Right Level of Insurance For You & Your Family





Hi, welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to not just know better but do better with your money, then you've come to the right place. 

Today we're going to talk about insurance, like oh my gosh, and all of the stuff around insurance. I'm going to show you a little visual that I have in the book of the cogs around you and all the kinds of insurance and related types of things there are. Everything from health insurance which is kind of one of those things that we should all have to auto insurance to the smaller things like flood insurance, renters insurance, dental, disability, long-term care. Oh my gosh! The list can go on and on and on. The chapter of the book that that graphic is in is called the grown-up stuff. Dealing with it sometimes is like uhhh.. it feels a little like drudgery. A few videos back, I talk about adulting. When we finish a task like making a decision about insurance it's like good job Stacey, you did it. You sat down, you read, you talked to a professional and you made a decision. You know some of those are easy, like auto insurance it's kind of illegal to not have auto insurance right. Health insurance, it's kind of illegal to not have health insurance or at least it's very costly. But how do you make decisions about all the other kinds of insurances that yea it would be great to have it when you're trying to get your budget right sized with your income and your spending and if you buy all those insurances, are you going to have enough money left over to you know put food on the table or take a vacation? Where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? And that's the cruz of what I want you to walk away from this video. I can't tell you where to draw the line. You have to do a lot of reading, a lot of studying, you have to talk to professionals and you have to follow your own intuition about where you draw that line. But here's the thing is in the book I have you respond to each one of those. Do I want it? Do I need it? If I had enough money, would I just go buy it? And at what point does it become important? Life insurance, like here's my truth about life insurance - you've all hear me talk about how much I used to struggle when my daughter was little. But the truth is like life insurance isn't even a choice because if something happened to me it WOULD NOT be okay that I didn't leave something to help her become an adult. It's not okay. And the truth is I didn't need a one million dollar policy. I brought what was for years a $25/mo policy that would have left her with enough money to at least get her through college and help her get on her feet after that. And you know I was really looking forward to being done paying for life insurance at some point I thought you know when she turned eihgteen maybe. But now I realize no no no no, it's still for me that line is still no. I need to have life insurance. I'm older so I don't get to pay $25/mo anymore but no matter how challenging our financial situation was in those years, that is a payment that I never missed. And so that's what I want YOU to think about in this conversation about insurance is what is it that you know that there's a line that you should have. Go do your homework, go see how much it costs, if you think you can't afford it an you have kids like just go find out how much it is because you can at least maybe get half way there. And half way is better than nothing. So that's what I have to say about insurance. There's a lot more in the book and the truth is theres a never ending amount of information about this. I encourage you to learn, read and seek the advice of a professional who's going to teach you and not just sell you a product. 

If you have anymore questions or what to chat about this, come over to our Facebook Page group we have called Team Do Better, sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.TheFincanceGym.com or sign up for our video series below. And have a great day going and making decisions about insurance!