23 Oct Is Mortgage and Life insurance a waste of money?
It saddens me that still today many NZs view their personal risk insurance such as life insurance, trauma cover, income and mortgage insurance and health insurance as a waste of money. Even yesterday I had a couple call up our office wanting to cancel both their life insurance policies and trauma cover. After we explained ‘How will you pay the bills and what would happen to your family if either of you were to become sick or injured or die’. They still decided to cancel their policies.
What NZs don’t understand is that we today have a 1/3 chance of being struck down by a serious illness or injury by the time we reach 55yrs. So its not a matter of if but when. Also most NZs on average only have just three weeks worth of savings that they can fall back on to pay the pay the bills while they are out of work recuperating and trying to get better.
We still live in a country where the attitude ‘She will be right’ wins over common sense. For many families personal risk insurance such as income and mortgage protection cover is still considered a luxury item and is way down the family list of priorities. We don’t question paying insurance on our $5000 car or $50,000 home and contents cover or for our $10,000 boat. But when it comes to protecting our families and ourselves livelihood with personal risk insurance we somehow seem to think its a waste of money and low priority.
Many people do have bits and bobs but typically they have the wrong cover and wrong products. You need to see an AFA and make sure you have the best products and correct advice for your situation. Seeing an AFA will not cost you any more but will actually make sure you are set up correctly with the right companies and not one through a supermarket or warehouse. If you wanted dental or medical advice would you go to a supermarket or get it direct online, no thst would be stupid? Its the same for your risk insurance, you ned to see a professional and AFA. If you choose to try and figure it out your self you will do it wrong and come unstuck.
Like most other countries in the OECD such as Canada, US, Australia and Britain personal insurance is top of their list of priorities and rightly so. I see the devastation placed on the family when one of the bread earners gets sick or injured and they have no risk insurance. The effects are catastrophic. Very quickly the family runs out of money and some even lose their house because they cant pay the rent or mortgage let alone put food on the table. You need to ask the question ‘What would happen if I got sick or injured and couldn’t work. How would we the bills?’
Every NZ family should have a complete suite of wrap around personal risk insurance before they take out any other insurance. Your ability to work and earn an income far out weighs anything else. You must have income or mortgage protection, trauma cover and life insurance. The only ones that are going to suffer if something should happen to you are your family. Do you want that? And if you never get to claim and all those premiums you have paid are gone then that’s fine but at least you know you have a safety net waiting.
Take a look at this article just out of the NZ Herald 24/10/2015
‘A tragedy for a young mother’
When Kourtney Ryder experienced lower back pain during her pregnancy doctors put it down to the baby leaning on her spine.
Then, two months after she had her son, K’ida-laine, the ongoing pain was attributed to the birth.
It was only when she insisted on a blood test that the real cause of the pain was revealed – she had cervical cancer.
The 36-year-old mother-of-four finished five weeks of radiation and chemotherapy in July. Three weeks ago her specialist told her the disease would be terminal.
Mrs Ryder believes the pain and persistent heavy bleeding was misdiagnosed for more than a year before doctors found the tumour in March.
“They just put it down to back pain from the baby leaning on my spine,” she said.
“I demanded they do a blood test and they found my kidneys were failing from the painkillers they had given me, and when they put in the stents in the kidneys they found the cancer.
She has not formally complained and is instead pinning her hopes on a fundraising campaign to pay for alternative treatments that she hopes will extend her time.
Cousin Louise Henare has started a Givealittle page to raise money for the other treatments, including ozone therapy, vitamin C injections and traditional Maori kawkawa medicine.
Mrs Ryder’s partner of 17 years, Klintyn Ryder, whom she married in May after the cancer was diagnosed, has stopped working as a concreter so that he can look after Kourtney and the children.
“I can’t really do anything,” she said.
Finances are tight because the family now live on a benefit. They had to give up their rental home in Beach Haven and live with Mr Ryder’s parents in Glen Eden.
Cancer Society medical director Dr Chris Jackson said cervical cancer had become a rare condition, especially in young women, since three-yearly smear tests were started and the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine was offered to teenage girls from 2008.
“So this is an enormous tragedy and enormously distressing for a young mother,” he said.
He said vitamin C injections were an experimental treatment and he did not have any knowledge or experience of any potential benefits from ozone therapy.
Otago University Professor Margreet Vissers said she was about to start recruiting patients with bowel cancer for a clinical trial of vitamin C injections in Christchurch.
“There are definitely people for whom this works, and there are definitely people who are living quite a lot longer than their doctors ever expected even if the tumour hasn’t gone, but we can’t predict who they are,” she said.
Her research is being partially funded by the Health Research Council but she has also set up a Vitamin C for Cancer Trust to raise the rest of the $1 million cost of the trial.
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