Security Blanket

Estate planning: Getting life insurance is easy!

This is the first post in a series on estate planning. Despite the name, you need not have any sort of swanky estate. But you do need to think about how to TCB so your loved ones are taken care of after your death. Here is what we, Team Schmichaels, did.

The importance of life insurance was brought home in a very real and personal way in 2001, when my father died suddenly, my mother's household income plunged 65%, and she still had 17 years left on the mortgage. Thanks to the assorted policies they had taken out, my mom was able to pay off the house, sink decent sums into her her retirement portfolio (since she could no longer rely on my dad's retirement benefits), and keep living in the manner to which she was accustomed.

Money was no substitute for my father, nor did it erase the shock of losing him. But it did mean that my mom was able to keep her house, and her burdens weren't compounded by fresh worries about her immediate future.

And this is why one of the things we did to get ready for The Daughter was to take out life insurance policies.

Security Blanket: What this is all about

Welcome to Security Blanket -- monkey patterns optional.
 
It all started with our earthquake kit.

When my husband and I were childfree sybarites who slept in to the debauched hour of 8 a.m., we had a bright yellow bucket filled with the essentials for riding out three days without utilities, a few gallons of water, a hand-crank radio and a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards.

Then I got pregnant and it hit me that our prior plan for surviving The Big One -- camp in the back yard, drink our way through the wine cellar (to preserve the water supply for real emergencies), keep a running tally of who was dominating whom in Trivial Pursuit -- would probably not work for a baby. For one thing, babies are terrible at the sports & leisure category.