Is life insurance a necessity? It depends on who you ask. Since life insurance is for your survivors, what happens when you don’t have any survivors? When no one depends on you for anything? Even if you’re leaving someone behind, there are other (not necessarily better) ways to take care of certain issues. In many cases, it’s not insurance for life you should worry about. Taking care of burial expenses is one such issue, and a form of burial insurance could be a better choice.
Life Insurance Options
There are several types of life insurance and a Wikipedia page describes most of them. The right choice depends on certain variables. Things like your age, the ages of your survivors and the things still financially pending upon your death will decide the best choice. You need to select the right insurance policy for you.
The older you get, especially beyond 60 in the United States, the less likely you will need life insurance for anyone. Some survivors treat it like a bonus or something. I have a mother-in-law who treated my deceased father-in-law’s life insurance payment like that. I have a friend in the United States who refuses to buy life insurance even though he can afford it. He’s now in his 70s, and he has no potential survivors.
Is a Social Security Pension Enough?
My wife, Josie, is the only person that relies on my income. My income consists of a military pension and a social security pension. It’s enough for both of us because we own our house here in the Philippines, and we don’t own a vehicle of any kind. Our only monthly expenses are our utilities. If you’re paying on a mortgage or making a car payment, it’s likely that a single pension of any kind wouldn’t be enough.
Josie will be drawing her own social security pension later this year. She can live on it in the Philippines. My mother-in-law has been living on hers for 20 years, and it’s less than what Josie will receive every month. I have two life insurance policies, one for accidental death or dismemberment. Either one would take care of any lingering financial issues with money to spare, I’m sure.
It’s more likely that either one of us, surviving the other, would move in with one of our children and their families in the United States. That is, of course, unless they join us in the Philippines. My younger son and his wife are thinking about living here when they’re old enough to retire.
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