Life insurance at the start of a career
[social_share]A young adult’s first purchase of life insurance is often associated with starting a family. Although it’s often a good idea to get or increase life insurance at that time, there are also good reasons for getting life insurance at the beginning of a career.
One of the major reasons to purchase life insurance is to care for dependents. While sometimes these dependents are obvious, particularly when children come along, others aren’t obvious at all. One particular example is parents who are getting elderly. Such a parent may be particularly dependent on help provided by an adult child, such as caring, gardening, or various odd jobs, which can be done by another person but at pay.
As well, at the start of a career a person often assumes a number of long-term commitments, such as buying a house. If a house is purchased in conjunction with one or several other people, it’s very important to make clear who will be getting what share of the house if one person dies, and also whether the other people involved can afford to pay for that share. This is often overlooked, but such situations can cause enormous cash flow problems, and life insurance for each buyer would be a responsible course of action.
This also applies when starting a business with a partner. Life insurance for each partner in the business will prevent disruption and lower the chance of failure should one partner die, as the life insurance payout will give the business some time to adapt.
Another reason to carry life insurance early in one’s career is to cover funeral costs. These can be surprisingly high and skimping can be a fraught matter among relatives, particularly when there is so much grief. Graveside disagreements can be a big cause of family rifts. Having costs covered by life insurance will ensure there’s less chance of a family fallout at a naturally tense time.
