Have you ever considered what would happen to your family finances if you or your partner were to become seriously ill, or even die?
Take the example of a young married couple with two children. The husband earns £40,000 a year and the wife earns £8,000 a year working part-time. They have a recent joint mortgage on their property worth about £130,000. One day the husband is killed in a traffic accident. How would the family fare?
With no life assurance cover at all, not even within the husband’s pension scheme, the result would be financial disaster for the family.
Some simple disaster planning could avert real hardship if the worst does happen. Taking out a life policy on both parents that pays out on the first death could be the most effective way of protecting the family – if the primary homemaker is lost, the problems can be just as devastating. The premiums might be lower than you think.
With sensible arrangements to cover serious illness as well, a family’s finances would be put on a much sounder footing and the mortgage could even be paid off if there were enough life cover.
It is tempting to think that such a disaster will not happen, and they are relatively rare. But if your family did suffer such a loss, the cover may make all the difference.
