As we all know life happens but can you
provide for yourself and your family in
case there's a major emergency?
Even a death in the family?
Will you have enough
money to pay your bills?
Stay in your
home and take care of everything you
need to in order to stay on your feet?
Joining me this morning is someone who
deals with these issues every single day
helping people protect their financial
Futures.
With me this morning is Mary
Jane Fortin from Allstate.
Good morning.
Good morning thank you for having me.
Thanks for being here, because I find
this to be such an important topic it's
it's very sensitive a lot of people
don't like to talk about it, life
Insurance, but it needs to be addressed
because you never know.
Absolutely and you know the reality is Olga
that there's just stories every day
that come to mind we just had one recently
where we had our agent was just
haunted by this.
We had a couple that came in they
were starting their new life together it
was a second marriage for both of them
and they came in on the house and they
were going to get some life coverage
they held off and a months later the wife called in, shared with
our agent that the husband had
passed unexpectedly and she asked - and
she wanted to know and she said did
we get that life insurance in place?
And our agent was haunted by having to
say no we never got to it.
It resulted in her
having to sell the house, she had to move
in with her niece, I mean there are
stories like this all the time look at
GoFundMe exact how many of us come
together to help friends and family that
didn't take action and prepare for
life's uncertainty.
And that's why we
want to talk about it more this morning
because taking that action can create
such peace of mind I have some stats
here that I'd like to share with my
Viewers, truly alarming. 37 million
American families do not have coverage.
Wow that's a lot.
It's summing.
And then look at this one 56 percent of
women have coverage, 62 percent of men
have Coverage.
Look at that gap.
We're lagging and we need to address that
right?
Because all of us have needs and the
answer here is everyone needs to take
the time to really understand their
situation and if they need help with
that they should know that there's
agents around the country allstate
agents 10,000 all over the country that
would be happy to help sit down with you and really
understand this risk that you may face.
We take the
time every year to have our medical exam
and do a financial wellness checkup and
make sure that you're addressing these
risks that you may be facing.
Wo let me
give you a few examples here the Allstate agent and I'm going to
give you a few examples of a single mom
who let's say just got divorced or a
single mom who never got married or let's
just say a single dad right?
One income or even
someone like myself and my husband two
incomes times are tough.
A lot of people
are saying I can't afford it it's too
much money talk to me about how much
policies are and how affordable they can
be?
It's important to know that.
It is important Olga and theirs is
I want to debunk an important myth
right?
The reality is people overestimate
the cost of insurance.
It can be less than the
cost of that cup of coffee that we stop
and get every day.
There you go.
And so there's different types of
coverage and the reality is that there's what
we call term insurance that will cover
you for a 10 20 30 year period it tends to
be more affordable I like it for younger
families and then there's what we call
permanent coverage that takes you
through your life and is ideal if you
want to leave a legacy to your heirs or
to a charity but single moms I can tell
you I didn't take action, I have been in
the insurance industry my whole career
and I didn't take action and life
Insurance.
I did when I had my children,
good for you!
My parents told me I waited too long,
Well, but I did!
You did it, and you did better
than me because it wasn't until I found
myself as a single parent thinking
through the implications to my daughter's future if something
happened to me, realizing I needed to
take action, and so for so many single moms
out there, single parents, you know you
need to think through what would happen
if something happens to me, and to
your point there are lots of
solutions out there are affordable solutions
out there, and if you need help with
that just reach out because we've got
agents around the country in your
community that I know would be happy to
help you prepare for this type of event.
Mary jane earlier you mentioned a story
that unfortunately really didn't have a
good ending in terms of the family
taking that action.
Do you have one where
the family did take action at least two
gave them peace of mind?
Actually I do there's one that just happened
in the last few months, we had a young
family that had just built their dream
home, and was in our agents office
securing homeowners coverage.
Oart of the discussion our agent identified
that there was a gap in the life
insurance given the new home, and and so
they agreed to move forward with some
life Insurance, and unfortunately as
just as we had issued that policy, that
dad was tragically killed and his wife
and children thankfully had the
benefit of his action, of protecting their
future and his dream, that they'd be
able to live in that home, and carry on
you know as best they could without him.
So it was powerful for our agent as well
he felt so good that he was able to
identify that need and make sure they
took action and who would have thought
several weeks later we'd be honoring this
policy.
We don't think it'll happen but if
it does, like you just showed us right
now it's a peace of mind.
It is absolutely a peace of mind and the
important point is that if you don't
take action, who will?
And if you don't do
it today?
When will you take care of this?
because every day that goes by is a risk.
Thank you so much for your time I do
appreciate it.
Thank you and if you'd
like to learn more about securing your
family's financial future visit allstate.com backslash life
insurance that's allstate.com backslash
life insurance or go to our website, the
balancingact.com.