Welcome to The Financial Column in association with Money Plus, Bridge Street, Boyle
Protecting Your Family from unexpected financial shocks.
We’re almost at the end of January and, for most of us, some, if not all, of our New Year’s resolutions have unfortunately gone by the board and will probably re-appear on our list again in a year’s time.
While we recommend that it is an ideal time to review your overall personal finances and objectives we recognise that, with the best of intentions, you may not get around to doing it.
However, at a minimum, we recommend that you review the existing protection you have in place for your family and dependents.
Sadly, we all know of friends, family, relations and acquaintances who have been affected by unforeseen events such as serious accidents, illness such as cancer, heart attacks or strokes, and, unfortunately in some cases, unexpected death.
The question to ask yourself is :
Do I have a plan in place to protect my family and dependents financially if some unexpected event occurred which would threaten my family’s financial security?
How would you be affected in such circumstances – do you have sufficient protection through life insurance, serious illness cover, income protection in place, or are you presuming it will never happen to you?
Recent research carried out by Irish Life found that over half a million parents with children under 17 have no life insurance at all, let alone income protection or serious illness protection.
I wonder why this is? We all have various types of insurance – house/health/motor, travel etc, so why do so many have no life insurance? Is it because it is viewed as a discretionary item?
In our view life insurance for family protection is not only a necessity but the most important protection of all.
The cost of life insurance has fallen over the last number of years due to the fact that we’re all living longer, and increased competition between the life insurance companies. The younger you are when taking out life insurance, the cheaper the premiums.
So how much life cover should you have and how much will this cost? As a general rule of thumb – the standard recommendation is to have life insurance of about 10 times your net after tax wages.
The example below shows the monthly premiums for a person (male or female), non-smoker, for a term of 20 years, for €300,000 life insurance (level term) at different ages:
Age Next Birthday 25 35 45 55
€300,000 life insurance for 20 years €15.16pm €21.21pm €43.70pm €123.82pm
Note: Above quotes are based on rates at 20th January 2016.
For this article I have focussed purely on the importance of having suitable basic life insurance to protect you and your family in the unfortunate event of death. However there are a number of other protection areas which can assist in protecting you and yours, like serious illness, income protection, business protection.
However, before deciding what life insurance and other protection is the most suitable for your personal circumstances you should consult a local independent financial broker or adviser such as Money Plus. In this regard Belinda McCauley in Money Plus, Bridge St, Boyle would be delighted to assist you. Belinda can be contacted at 071-9194000/ 086-7847827 or by email: [email protected].
Boyletoday.com/MoneyPlus accept no responsibility for any decisions taken as a result of advice provided in this column. A reliable recommendation can only be made following a full detailed consultation taking an individual particular circumstances into consideration
