Value Yourself – death /serious illness

You’re too modest stop undervaluing you

Look at any life insurance web site and they will throw lots of statistics out about how many people do not have enough life insurance cover or have no cover. We are not going to bore you with all these numbers. It’s like the risk of being struck by lightning it’s an interesting fact but not too helpful (1 in 10m by the way).

You’re reading this and so already thinking about life cover.

We have helped many clients with their life cover needs the following is a typical case:

Married couple in their 40s with two young children

Richard and Claire have a repayment mortgage of £200,000. Richard works full time and earns £100,000 per annum and Claire is on a career break. They think that £200,000 of life cover reducing to nil over 20 years will provide them with sufficient life cover.

However we ask them to consider the following:

• If Richard dies now then the family has lost out on 20 years of his £100,000 income plus inflation. Although the mortgage will be repaid Claire might be forced to go back to work if there is no other life cover in place. Richard and Claire should consider further life cover to maintain the family lifestyle which could pay out either a lump sum or monthly benefit.
• What if Claire dies Richard may want to take some time off to look after his family or he could now have increased childcare costs. We could insure Claire so that on her death a tax free income could be paid to Richard.
• A serious ill health condition may impair the ability of Richard to work or Claire to look after the children, insuring against critical or life changing illness would help Richard and Claire stay focused on their recovery without having to worry about bills.