How Important is Insurance in my Investment Portfolio

A person is putting his life’s work in the hands of other people for no particular reason. I always cringe whenever I hear someone boasting that they do not have insurance. “I chased that insurance agent from my house.” That is the common topic amongst friends. All I can say is that if you have any friend who insists that insurance is for fools, then you need to start getting new friends.

At this time we have a financial crisis and one of the things that are being asked of any banks is that they increase their deposit insurance and also insure themselves against failure. If the banks can get insurance, so should you. Your investment portfolio becomes useless in a hurry in the event of something bad happening. I know, I know, bad things don’t happen to me.

Some of the insurance that you must get includes

1. Auto Insurance              – I sometimes think think that if this was not the law, no one would own auto insurance.
2. Life Insurance                – No one wants to be told that they might die. I would suggest that everyone will die so better take care of it.
3. Liability Insurance          – Until recently this was not considered necessary until someone sued their parents for giving birth to them.
4. Home Owners Insurance – Why anyone would invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and not have home owners insurance is way beyond me.
5. Health Insurance            – I doubt if you have to convince anyone that they need this but somehow very few people are adequately covered due to its expense.
6. Disability Insurance       – Until you are not able to go to work, you never know how important disability insurance is. If you value your income, then this is mandatory.
7. Long Term care Insurance- It is more expensive to take care of our aging. Considering that medicare barely covers the cost of living, this is very important.

If you are busy buying and selling stocks and have forgotten to include a few dollars every month for any of the above, then think again. Instead of paying off high credit card bills, you should invest in these insurance plans and trust me, you will not regret it.