Love for Sale - Why Do We Resist Buying Life Insurance?

By Linda Rey, Rey Insurance Agency

Advertising works! Why else would people spend so much money on “stuff”? “Stuff” that depreciates, gets old, gets boring, doesn’t fit and ends up at Good Will (notably, a good destination). Why do people want to buy tangible items? To feel prosperous? To feel good?

Love is not tangible. You express love, you feel love, you can’t touch love, but it feels good. Can you buy love? Believe it or not, Life insurance symbolizes love, can be bought and yet, it’s intangible…just like love!

Why the Hesitation to Buy Life Insurance?

I was told when I got into the business of selling life insurance that it’s going to be hard. I thought “why should it be hard?” People should be buying this “stuff” as eagerly as they buy auto insurance when picking up their new car or homeowner insurance when they close on their new home. So, why not buy life insurance for their family? Yet, there is a hesitation. One must be prompted, poked and prodded versus proactive. Disaster tends to strike before this is on the radar.

Agents are prepared that when marketing to the public, it’s not really effective to say that we sell life insurance because people won’t get excited. We must disguise our occupation with a bunch of descriptive euphemisms. That is what makes this business hard.

Why should people be “pitched” about something that will:

  1. Keep a family in their home without worry,
  2. Help pay bills that don’t go away,
  3. Send their kids to college,
  4. Pass their business to the next generation,
  5. Provide enough money to keep their business thriving even after death so that the family will reap the benefit of a fair sale vs. a fire sale?

Do we convince ourselves that we are not going to die? Do we believe that if we buy life insurance, our life will end tragically?

If one has a child (or a business), we must face the daunting reality that we’ve now entered adulthood and must be responsible. We owe it to our family. There is no room for procrastination and denial. Am I being too abrupt or perhaps insulting? Maybe, but dancing around the truth doesn’t keep families from despair and destitution.

Life Insurance is an Unselfish Investment

I’m done pontificating. Don’t wait. Take the required steps towards being responsible and making an “unselfish investment”. If you have, at the very least, checked into your group benefits, you’ve started the process. Even if you researched the internet, congratulations on initiating the process! Do your family a favor, however, and call a trusted advisor anyway. Trusted advisors have been around longer than the internet. Your attempts are commendable and it would be a shame if you found out too late that they were inadequate. There is nothing to lose by learning and talking about it. Smile, it’s not all that bad.