Why should you purchase life insurance as early in life as possible? Let me lay out a few reasons and, hopefully, get your attention.

 

# 1. Certain types of life insurance build what's called a "cash value". This means that as you continue to pay your life insurance premiums you'll eventually build up a "nest egg" that you may borrow against later in your life if you need to.

# 2. Your life insurance "premiums" (payments) are generally lower earlier in your life. They begin to increase as you grow older. You see, life insurance, like car insurance, is based on the average statistics of a given amount of people in your age group. Those statistics will show that a certain percentage of people in a particular age group will pass away. This percentage will generally be higher for people in their fifties compared to people in their twenties.

# 3. To keep your unexpected passing from becoming an unexpected burden on your family. Funeral arrangements are not cheap these days. The average funeral costs between $6,000-$10,000.00, depending on how extravagant the final arrangements are. There are less expensive options such as being cremated, but even cremation has a "higher tier" and "lower tier" of dignity. These options vary from being placed in a pleasant looking urn to being delivered to your loved ones in a cardboard box. No, this is not an exaggeration.

# 4. These final expenses can become the responsibility of your next of kin. Yes, that's absolutely correct. You didn't misread that. If you pass unexpectedly and have no assets or life insurance coverage, then the final expenses fall on your next of kin. This could be your spouse. mother, father, children, brother, sister, ect. Someone is going to get a large bill, courtesy of you and if they don't have the money to pay for it right away then they'll have to make payment arrangements.

This can seriously damage your loved ones credit. Say for example that it is your elderly parents that get stuck with your final expenses. Let's say that they own their home, but they're on a fixed income like retirement benefits, social security, ect. If something happens where they're unable to make a payment on YOUR funeral expenses then they can be taken to court and have a judgement placed against them until they pay. In some cases, if they're still unable to pay after going to court, then their personal assets can be seized in order to settle YOUR debt for funeral expenses. This means that they could lose their vehicle or even their home.

This sounds like a morbid, unbelievable situation, especially in this day and age, but I promise you that this situation is very real and happens frequently to family members of individuals that don't take the time to prepare for the final expenses.

Life insurance, especially "Term Life" is affordable for most people. You can also look into getting a burial policy that will cover your final expenses. You must do something right away though. If you are currently uninsured then you run the risk of potentially financially paralyzing those people that you love the most.