Imagine the following scenario:
A regular family.
Mom. Dad. 2 young kids.
Dad running off to work each day while Mom took care of the kids at
home.
While not “rich”, Dad brought home income that allowed the
family to live comfortably.
But each day Dad went to work, he had a very good chance of
dying.
What did Dad do for work?
He was strapped to a large container filled with explosives and shot
through the atmosphere at an incredible speed – all for educational purposes!
Well, this simple scenario is based on the late Neil
Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
I came across this interesting article recently about how
Neil took care of his family in case his Apollo 11 mission didn’t make
it.
You can access the article here.
In reading the article, there are a couple of reasonable conclusions:
- He clearly wanted to protect his family. There’s no question about this since he went through the effort of autographing all of those envelopes.
- But he couldn’t get life insurance. Well, not that he couldn’t qualify. The price was just out of reach. And you can’t blame the insurance company – this was 1969 and after all, it was rocket science!
- And
those NASA guys are pretty creative.
Or really bored.
So what does this all mean for all of us non-astronaut
types?
Well, Neil clearly recognized a need to protect his
family. After all, he was the primary
breadwinner in the family with 2 young kids.
Without his income, they would have been in rough shape.
The claim that the surviving spouse could simply go back to
work is not always realistic – and certainly not back then! Remember, back in 1969, women still weren’t
in the workforce in great numbers. And
while I’m sure his wife was very intelligent and capable, going back to work
and sending the kids off to before and after-school care isn’t always an option
for people.
And there’s no guarantee that her income would even be close
to what Neil made.
Further, Neil couldn’t get life insurance for a price he
could afford. Though people don’t always
plan that ahead, Neil probably could have obtained a policy well before his
astronaut days at a reasonable price.
The point is that you never know what can happen. We don’t like to think about our own
mortality, but things happen all of the time.
We don’t buy auto insurance the day before we think we are going to have
an accident. We have to have a policy
just in case.
Remember, each day that passes makes raises the cost of
insurance because you are getting older.
And as you get older, the probability that something will happen (e.g. heart
attack, being diagnosed with cancer, etc.) increases.
Neil couldn’t get insurance, but he had a fallback plan that capitalized on his stature as an American hero.
September is Life Insurance Awareness Month.
To most people, life insurance is about as
exciting as watching paint dry.
But imagine if it was your family instead of the Armstrong’s. What would your spouse and family do if you
were gone?
