Article Title: Life Insurance: It’s Not an Option, It’s A Must for African American
You’ve heard the saying: “There’s two things that are certain in life, death and taxes.” And believe you me Uncle Sam is going to get his money and death in inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, but instead, a matter of when.
In the black community, the subject of death is one that most don’t like to talk about. And when you don’t talk about it unfortunately, you don’t plan for it. Which in my opinion is a stigma we need to let go of completely. Yes, losing a loved one is hard, but let’s face it, we are not meant to be here forever.
A lot of times we feel that life insurance is expensive and it’s more of a want instead of a need. We don’t realize the value and importance of it until a family member has to be buried and everyone is pulling funds together or selling fish plates in order to give their loved one a nice homegoing service and put them in the ground. Truth be told, this causes more stress on the entire family and makes it even harder to grieve. It honestly hurts my heart when that happens because policies are not that expensive.
Life insurance policies can be as little as $20/month for a $250,000 term policy for a healthy 20- or 30-something year old, for example, and even less than that for a child. That’s less than the cost of a meal and drink at one of your favorite restaurants. While the premiums do increase depending upon age, health status, etc, this shouldn’t deter you from getting a policy that is much needed. Work it into your budget the amount you can afford to pay each month to help you determine the amount of policy you should get.
So before you spend money on that new handbag, outfit, shoes, or turn up with friends, and not think twice about doing it, get you a life insurance policy for yourself, spouse, child or parent to ensure that you have your plan together when it’s yours or their time to go and you or your family are not scrambling to borrow money or sell fish plates just to put yourself or them in the ground.
