Insurance is a tough concept for many people. Any kind of insurance including term "" life assurance usually deals with "bad things" and most people's brains are trained to block out bad things. Let's look at how we can handle some of the risks that life presents with a handy tool such as term "" life assurance.



Who wants to think of a major surgery, their house burning down, or the death of a loved one. There's always good old-fashioned procrastination but the tendency to put off purchasing insurance goes a little deeper. There's a psychological "head in the sand" mechanism where a person's feels that if he/she just blocks it out of his/her mind, then it won't happen. Unfortunately, millions of Americans find out each year that this approach works as well for us as it did for the dodo. Risk is an inherent part of living and insurance is there to correctly take the fear off your mind (rather than just suppressing it).

Studies have shown that the stress of small items in the back of a person's mind can affect their sense of well-being, stress, and ability to function well. This can be that unlocked door at night on the car (good luck sleeping well once that's in your mind) to that form you need to fill out or on to bigger needs such as term "" life assurance. We all know it's important to have term life but piece of mind is one more reason to get it done and get it done today.

Many people have a distorted sense of risk or probability. There's a great book called the Drunkard's Walk that looks closely at how our brains constantly misunderstand probability and risk. There are different scenario's in which this applies to our view of insurance. The first is that a person takes too rosy a picture in regards to the risk of passing away during a critical period of time...say when children are growing up and depend on that person for financial well-being. "It won't happen to me". In some regards they are correct that the probability is low but the risk is very high. They are only looking at one side of the equation. A more apparent example is to be afraid of flying on planes but not afraid of driving a car. The rare (amazingly so considering the number of flights each day) plane crash is horrific. It's splashed across newspapers around the world and the brain quickly runs this through the fear processor of the brain. Low probability/High risk. On the other hand, cars "feel" much safer partly because we're more familiar with them and because it's possible to survive a car accident with the modern safety innovations. But...you actually a higher probability of dying in a car accident than in a plane crash. Why is the perception off? We have difficulties correctly understanding probability and risk. We say "I'm healthy...I don't need health insurance" or "I'm young...I don't need life insurance". That's only part of the equation...

Although the probability of a major surgery (although on average, a person will have a major medical bill every 7 years) or passing away during the prime of your life is low, the risk or outcome can be financially catastrophic. You can easily rack up $100's of thousands in medical bills. If a primary earner for a family passes away, it can even be worse with millions of dollars to replace the lost income. This is a case of people fixating on the probability (not likely) but not the risk (catastrophic outcome). Insurance is specifically designed to address this risk. You can learn more about how insurance works to spread this risk but the key is that you participate by securing your own term "" life insurance. Not only will you protect your loved ones...you just may sleep a little better.