Will your assets be enough?
If you are like most Americans, your net worth has probably taken a big hit in the last eighteen months. With some stock portfolios down 50% and home prices falling faster than the Federal Government can produce new schemes to bail us out, it doesn’t take a math whiz to see that your nest egg isn’t what it once was.
Why am I rehashing this bad news in a blog about life insurance? It’s simple – many folks, when evaluating how much life insurance is needed to adequately protect the family in the event of the breadwinner’s death, consider that liquidating some of the accumulated assets would provide some funds for the family. These assets, along with some life insurance, would be enough for the family to live on for some time.
Maybe, in light of these shrinking assets, one should reconsider how much life insurance would be needed to keep the family comfortable in the event of the breadwinner’s death. I have spoken to many clients recently who have taken a look at their assets and realized they had better add more life insurance to their financial plans.
When this financial mess improves and your stock portfolio and real estate do so too, you can reevaluate whether to reduce the amount of your life insurance or to keep it in place to protect your assets, so the family wouldn’t have to liquidate them to survive.
