What’s your #1 asset?
Do you think it’s a beautiful house, a late model car, a large bank balance? Your physical body, your intelligence or perhaps even your sense of humour?
I know what mine is… it’s actually my ability to earn an income not just for now but for all my working years into the future. If you remember just one thing from reading this article, it’s this:
“You MUST Protect Your #1 Asset… that is, Yourself.”
I want you to consider how much you will likely earn through your current job or business between now and retirement… it might be a lot of money.
Most of my clients will earn anywhere between $1-3M in their working lives (and some earn much more). Whatever your potential earnings when you look at it over an entire lifetime it’s a lot of money, wouldn’t you agree?
Remember a couple of decades ago when a million dollars was a huge sum? Now the average house price in many inner city Australian suburbs is $1M!!!
My question to you is:
What would you do if not only your current but also your future income was taken away from you? (whether by sickness, injury or accident)
It’s a question that’s really important to answer so please, take a moment to consider your response.
According to the Real Insurance Family Protection Survey released in May 2017*, 38% of families had no life insurance and around a quarter had some covers but weren’t confident it would be enough.
The chances are if you’re reading this post you’re quite probably part of the majority that doesn’t have the right levels of personal cover.
For instance, did you know that most Australians have appropriate car insurance but not the right levels of personal protection for themselves?
Let’s say a car is valued at around $20,000 and you’re set to earn around $2M in wages in a lifetime.
These are only approximate figures but, this means that if you don’t have Income Protection but you do have car insurance, you’re only covering an item that’s around 100x less valuable than yourself as an income producer…!!!
We insure our cars against loss yet, many of us don’t even really consider protecting ourselves… a human asset worth around 100x times as much value!
This is completely illogical. I would venture to even suggest it’s utterly insane from a risk vs potential return perspective.
Sure there’s an obvious need to insure a vehicle and I think everyone should have adequate car cover BUT, why don’t we protect ourselves properly as well?
I want you to think about this for a moment…
You can buy another car if one gets wrecked or damaged. It’s not so easy to replace the human body and your ability to earn a living.
I’ve both seen and also personally experienced the consequences of a family not getting the right advice when it comes to Income Protection policies… it’s not something I would wish on any person.
THESE DAYS I work as a Wealth Coach and I have my own practice called Sentinel Wealth Partners. Among the many things I do for clients is I make sure they have enough protection for themselves, for their family and for their assets, so that if the worst case scenario actually ends up happening, they can still enjoy a reasonable standard of living for the rest of their years.
A key motivation for me is that I NEVER want to see another person or family go through what our family did because they weren’t given the right advice about how to protect their income.
So what about the people who don’t believe in insurance…?
Well, all I can say is… you’ll believe it pretty well if something bad happens to you. Of course, I don’t wish this on anyone but please remember… life is unpredictable, we never know EXACTLY what could be coming around the corner.
We might have ourselves 100% completely under control but, the universe doesn’t involve only ourselves, it includes an infinite number of other working parts that can affect us, whether we like it or not. If you drive on the roads then no matter how small the chance there’s always a certain probability that some other car might crash into you, even if you’re the best driver in the world. Take, for instance, Michael Schumacher. Arguably one of the best drivers in history yet, despite his formidable driving skills he still crashed out while skiing back in 2013 and was left him in a coma with life threatening injuries.
“I don’t need insurance I have wealthy relatives.”
“Surely they’ll help us out if things got really bad”… Would they really? I hope they would… but smiles and promises can quickly change when money’s involved.
It’s a very emotional topic for most people and we get to see the worst of it only when the chips are down.
Why would you leave control of your financial destiny in the hands of someone else anyway?
For the lucky few clients who can afford to ‘self-insure’ themselves I teach them how to structure their assets to protect themselves properly without impinging on their goals.
Once again, I want to repeat the key takeaway from this blog post:
You MUST protect your #1 asset – your ability to earn an income.
Contact your adviser or broker, talk to your loved one at home today and most importantly, TAKE ACTION.
Don’t let life get in the way or fall into the trap of becoming ‘too busy’ to sort out your insurances.
For just the cost of a few dollars a day you too can protect what is likely your greatest asset. The chances are that your ability to earn an income is an asset that is far too valuable to leave unprotected.
I’m sharing this general advice to disrupt your current thinking and help you understand the importance of receiving qualified financial advice.
I’m also a ‘commission free’ adviser so I don’t take insurance commissions as part of my business model. This means that my clients usually pay much less for their policies than with other advisers/brokers.
To book a complimentary appointment and/or discuss your own needs book into my diary here.
If you enjoyed reading this post and would like to read more you can view other articles here.
Licensee disclosure & disclaimers:
Adam Ben Lomsargis ABN 64 816 182 033 is an Authorised Representative and Credit Representative of MyPlanner Professional Services Pty Ltd Australian Financial Services Licence 425542.
This article contains information that is general in nature. It does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular person. You need to consider your financial situation and needs before making any decisions based on this information.
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