Celebrating Life Insurance Awareness Month: “Making Tomorrow, Today"

Laura Minzer, President of the IL Life & Health Insurance Council

When my husband and I became first time parents 13 years ago, we were more worried about whether we were prepared for life after the hospital stay than anything much further into the future.  Like all new parents, our lives were quickly consumed with diapers, sleepless nights and trying to capture all the wonderful developmental milestones that occur in between.  Twenty months later, we became parents for a second time, and before we knew it, we had two toddlers and then two preschool-aged boys, and never enough time in the day.

Then my mother-in-law suddenly lost her battle with cancer and everything we had never really taken the time to think about came rushing into focus.  Like 73 million Americans, my mother-in-law did not have life insurance.[1]  While we were incredibly fortunate to have been in a financial position to cover the costs of her funeral and burial expenses, it was not without making financial adjustments on our end to accommodate those costs.

My husband and I had talked about updating our life insurance policies since we had my first son, but it always seemed to become a conversation to revisit another day.  Losing my mother-in-law was the emotional wake-up call that we all eventually run out of tomorrows.

Let’s face it, planning for life if you are not in it is not exactly an enjoyable topic especially when life is full of busy, active children.  According to LIMRA, 42 percent of U.S. households report not having adequate resources to financially protect their children for any substantial length of time if the primary wage earner were to die.[2] 

Until that time in our life, my husband and I were among those households.

For us, it was more than just about ensuring our kids were not saddled with the costs of a funeral, but also ensuring we could keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and covering all the other expenses associated with their care and wellbeing if one of us were no longer around to do so.

The conversation we had put off for so long took less than an hour out of our day and we were able to select from numerous options to fit our financial needs.  Life insurance is an affordable and accessible tool for not only protecting those you love and care for, but also for securing intergenerational wealth so that when my kids eventually leave our nest, they have a solid financial foundation on which to build.

This September, we celebrate Life Insurance Awareness Month to raise awareness about the importance of financially protecting those you love most and all the tomorrows they have ahead of them.

As we all navigate the uncertainties of life, particularly over the past 18 months, there has never been a better time to make your tomorrow today when it comes to protecting your family’s financial future.

To learn more, please visit Life Happens.

[1] LIMRA and Life Happens 2021 Insurance Barometer Study (March 2021)

[2] Id.