At 68 and ½ years old I finally know what I am worth......

 

At 68 and ½ years old I finally know what I am worth......

Don’t know if you have ever asked yourself what are you really worth? And no, it has nothing to do with your fortune, properties, savings or net worth. But in the eyes of insurability.

Let’s go over some background information:   According to The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 2018, reporting that the most productive age in human life is between 60-70 years of age.

And the second most productive group of human beings is from 70 to 80 years of age. Followed by the third most productive the younger of the two aforementioned is 50 to 60 years of age.

Back to the subject, insurability.... Yes, insurance tables and your worth have nothing to do with your productivity, your work ethics, your dedication to all around you and all those people and entities that rather ask you for help knowing how busy you could be.

Benjamin Franklin once said:  that "if you want something done, ask a busy person." There's truth to that statement. After all, the busier we are, the better we manage our time. Busy people are able to get more done in a day because they don't waste time

And let’s get to the meat of the subject. Insurability, how it is measured, and is it still applicable?  When societies are talking about raising the retirement age, and we are living longer. Us Life expectancy has gone from 68.14 years to 79.25 from 1950 to 2023 and still we consider that your final days are more valuable, or devalued for the fear of paying you out.

At an early age of 23, as a lieutenant in the Army, a retired US Army LTC sold me, my first whole life insurance policy with as many riders as possible: double indemnity, accidental death, insurance for an unborn child.... wow he made a killing on commission. Needless to say, didn’t have a child until ten years later. But you learned, and from my 33^rd year of life it has been Term insurance all the way, best bang for the buck but no cash value. I saw the industry evolve to “Universal life, and other sporty names, but kept firm with my 10-15-year terms until last year, when my provider sends me a letter saying this is the end. And from there on convert to whole life or pay some ludicrous amount.  That was they day I started questioning myself what I was truly worth. But still it took one more year until yesterday, when I had to make the decision and called them up to say, that it would not renew that policy and to get me coverage for the same amount of money I have been paying for the last 30 years and they did, And what it all ended up being was that I could only get 1/5 of what I had a day ago.  My $500,000-dollar policy became a $100,000 policy just like that.

So today I am worth 1/5 of what I was worth yesterday, and the last 14 years of my life have been the most active, the most involved, the most productive of my last 30 years or my entire life, but the fact is I am 68.5 years old is what matters to the insurance world, so I have depreciated in one day more than a new car sold taken out of the lot (13%) in my case 20%.

That is the way, as the Mandalorian creed says... insurance measures your probabilities in the later part of your life, fortunately my children are very well educated and my wife will be taken care of.  So, for the next ten years I will leave behind only 1/5 of myself to whom shall ever survive me.

So, do the mental drill, invest in your future, leave behind educated children that can earn a living by themselves.  And hopefully leave no debt for your survivors.