The Question Every Family Should Ask This September

Is your financial plan secure?

by Jennifer Fox

Jennifer Fox is senior vice president of federal and political affairs with Finseca. Contact her at jfox@finseca.org.

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. The most important conversation it prompts, though, is not about insurance at all. It is about the people we love.

Would your family’s financial plan still work if an income suddenly disappeared?

It is an uncomfortable question, and a practical one. A family can save diligently for years, make thoughtful choices and build a plan around everyday responsibilities, then watch that plan unravel after the loss of a parent, partner or business owner. Mortgage payments, groceries, child care, student loans, tuition savings, retirement contributions and the ordinary bills of life do not pause while a family grieves.

Life insurance exists to create breathing room when waiting is not an option.

A Gap Measured In Trillions

Too many Americans remain exposed to this risk. LIMRA estimates a $12 trillion gap between the life insurance coverage Americans have and the protection they actually need. An estimated 102 million adults say they need coverage or need more of it, even as the large majority of financially secure households already have a policy in place.

Those figures should give us pause. Insurance is not the whole of financial security, but it is often the foundation the rest of the plan is built on.

Start With What Needs Protecting

Life insurance is easy to describe in policy terms. Term or permanent. Death benefit or cash value. Individual or employer-provided. Those distinctions matter, and a qualified financial security professional can help a family work through them. The better starting point is simpler: What needs to be protected? For how long? And what can a family comfortably afford?

For some households, the answer is income replacement, so a surviving spouse or partner can keep paying the monthly bills without immediately changing jobs, selling the home or draining savings. For others, it means protecting a child’s education fund or keeping retirement savings intact. For a small-business owner, coverage can create stability for employees, customers and partners if someone essential is suddenly gone.

Life insurance exists to create breathing room when waiting is not an option...

None of this requires assuming the worst. It requires preparing responsibly for the possibility that life changes without warning.

Beginning The Conversation

Starting does not require having every answer. Take a clear inventory. What debts would remain? How many years of income would the household need to replace? Which goals matter most: staying in the home, supporting children, preserving a business, protecting retirement savings? Then talk with a financial security professional who can translate those priorities into a plan.

And if coverage is already in place, this is an ideal month for a review. A policy purchased years ago may not reflect a new child, a marriage or divorce, a home purchase, a growing business or a changed income. Coverage that fit one season of life may fall short in the next.

Where Professionals Make The Difference

None of that happens on its own. The inventory above is straightforward to describe and hard for most families to complete without help, which is where financial security professionals earn their place. Consumers consistently overestimate what coverage costs and underestimate what they need, and a large share of uninsured households say the reason they have no policy is that no one ever approached them.

That is a solvable problem, and September is the natural opening. Run the review conversation with existing clients whose circumstances have changed. Ask the prospects who have been putting it off the one question at the top of this piece. The awareness campaigns do the work of raising the subject; the profession does the work of turning it into coverage.

Financial Security For All

At Finseca, we believe in Financial Security for All. That vision becomes real through informed decisions, honest conversations and professionals who help families protect what they have worked so hard to build. One-size-fits-all solutions do not get us there.

This September, ask the question. Review the plan. Start the conversation.

Because life insurance is, in the end, about giving the people you care about a stronger chance to keep moving forward when they need it most.

Find and share Life Insurance Awareness Month resources from Finseca here.