That watch on your wrist, the phone on the table in front of you, the bike leaning up in the garage and the car sitting in your driveway – it’s easy to judge their value, isn’t it? Firstly, there’s the price tag they came with when you first bought them, and then, secondly, there’s the hassle and inconvenience that goes alongside losing them or having them stop working. If you worried about having to replace them and deal with the downtime of not having them for a while, you’d probably be able to come up with a dollar figure to cover that worry quite easily. But how do you assign value to what’s arguably more important to your lifestyle: the ability to read and use that watch and phone, the fitness to go cycling, the income that paid for that car, that driveway?
Personal insurance can be hard to face – far harder than, say, insuring your phone, your bike or your car. After all, it’s not easy thinking about the potential for life to take a turn for the worse, but if you have family relying on you, a home you’re still paying off or a lifestyle you enjoy, you need to protect your income and mortgage, or consider life, trauma, disability and health insurance.
The easiest way to start thinking about this is through health insurance – which, coincidentally, is also the trigger for many of my clients coming to see me for the first time. In New Zealand we have a marvellous health service, up to a point. It’s as if our health system is designed so that if someone falls off a cliff, we have ambulances at the bottom that whisk you away for treatment. It works very well – you’re prioritised, you get a great emergency procedure and you tend to get fixed. But what if you’re not falling off that cliff? What if you’re unwell and fear you might fall off? Health insurance builds a fence that prevents you falling off by getting you the treatment before it becomes so extreme that you need the acute services those ambulances provide so well.
And then there’s income, trauma and mortgage cover. Those ambulances are all very well, but they’re not helping you bring in any income while you’re getting treatment. People can be amazed when they see what their potential income can be over a lifetime – add in the value of a home in Auckland, and they suddenly see what that income is creating, what they need to protect. Because we’re seemingly pre-programmed not to fear the worst, we focus instead on, for example, having worked for 15 years with never more than three weeks off for a broken arm, or a couple of days to have a mole removed. But imagine if suddenly you’re off for a protracted period of time – the consequences are so much more severe. Again, it can be hard to assign real dollar values to your health and ability to work, but there are real-life consequences that can have a real dollar impact when they go wrong.
Phil Robinson Insurance can help you focus on the value of what’s important in your life and tailor personal insurance specific to your lifestyle, your family and your income. For more information or a free, no-obligation consultation which can be either over the phone or in person, call me on 021 313231 or 09 320 3819, or contact me direct via the website.