Our Life Insurance Regrets

This post was made in collaboration with Life Happens. All opinions, images and content are my own.

The year was 2014 - my husband and I had been married for a year, and we just had our second child (our first together). My oldest son was 4, and we lived in a little, low-income apartment. We lived paycheck to paycheck. But we couldn’t be happier! It was such a sweet season - but we have one regret.

At the ages of 24 and 29, we got quotes for life insurance… but the $13 per month felt like too much at the time, so we passed on it. We told ourselves, we’ll do it when we make a little more money.

But you know what they say, more money, more problems. And so, as life progressed, there were always more expenses, more emergencies. By the time we got around to it, our premium price had gone up and we missed valuable time investing in our future.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to get started! Our top reasons for investing in life insurance were (a) protecting our family and (b) building generational wealth. You see, I don’t come from money, and neither of my parents is leaving me anything. Everything I build in this life goes straight toward affording a good life right now and trying to save for retirement.

And so our permanent life insurance policy is what we count on to help build generational wealth for our children and their children. It’s what we invest in monthly to guarantee that the next generation will have more of an advantage than we ever had. And in case the worst happens, my husband and I know that policy is there to take care of our family. .

There are different kinds of policies, whether it’s permanent like ours, or a term insurance policy that covers a certain period of time (we have these, too!), and you can determine how much you need for YOUR life and what YOU want to protect and provide for.

To figure out what was best for us, we used the resources from Life Happens - we love that it's a non-profit, unbiased resource to learn about life insurance without feeling pressured. No salesperson to sway you, just helpful information to figure out what’s best for you! We used this calculator tool to give us an idea of what kind of policies we might want, and to calculate what amount of coverage we’d need! to give us an idea of what kind of policies we might want, and to calculate what amount of coverage we’d need!

This is a big topic and can feel overwhelming and easy to put off, but Life Happens breaks it down in an accessible way - after using their calculator and reading through their FAQs, we were able to move forward on an insurance policy and can rest easy knowing our family will be cared for! , we were able to move forward on an insurance policy and can rest easy knowing our family will be cared for!