The Biggest Life Insurance Myth

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At Quick Quote Protect, we talk to lots of people who are thinking about getting life insurance, and as advisors, we always provide a bias-free opinion on the level of cover our potential customers need – though typically, it is always at least some cover. And sometimes, people tell us their stories.

Today, we’d like to hand you over to Jane. Jane called us looking for life insurance to cover herself as a single mother. She was keen to have the insurance policy and had done a good amount of research beforehand, because she’d suffered from the biggest life insurance myth of all:

I don’t need life insurance

Jane’s story

I met my husband when I was in college. We were both studying English – him, because he wanted to be a poet, and me because I planned to be a teacher. He ended up working as an IT support engineer, while I raised our two children, but he still wrote beautiful poems until he died.

Simon read about life insurance just after our first son was born. He was working earning decent money in London and came home with a leaflet from one of the insurance companies that had sent a rep to his work. I can remember him laughing in the kitchen as he declared it a scam. “Look at this,” he said, “with level term insurance they expect me to pay them £22 a month for the next 20 years and, when I live through it, it’s just finished. I get nothing back, not a penny. They are literally paid for doing nothing. £22 a month, what’s that? £264 a year? Like five grand over twenty years. They want me to give them five grand!” The leaflet went in the bin.

When we bought our house, the bank never pushed for us to have decreasing term life insurance, even though my dad had said they would, and that we should get it. Simon laughed again, telling me he’d been right, and my dad had been wrong. We didn’t need it. Life insurance was a scam.

I wish the bank had made it a condition of the mortgage.

My husband died in a road traffic accident when our son was three days off his third birthday. Our daughter was six. It was a year of hell.

I lost the house in three months and ended up moving back in with my parents – after all, I had no choice. The car went soon afterwards, and I found myself drowning in over £5,000 of credit card debt and overdrafts. Not too much for some people, but I had no income and I couldn’t cope. I thought about that day in the kitchen, the £22 a month and the five grand in twenty years. I learned that if he had taken it, I’d still have the house and I’d also have more than £130,000 in the bank.

It would have given the kids a home and a life.

It would have kept me on track.

I wouldn’t have found myself on the floor of my parent’s toilet crying with only a few bitter poems and considering the worst and most selfish options.

Five years later, my income isn’t amazing, but we’re renting a small house and I have a job. The first thing I did after my first paycheque was call Quick Quote Protect and get life insurance with critical illness cover. It’s minor - £150,000 for twenty years level term, but it costs me less than £30 per month and every time the direct debit leaves my bank account, I breathe a little easier, knowing my children are safe.

And if I outlive my policy term, I’ll be happy it was money well spent and I’ll take out another, more suitable policy.

“I don’t need life insurance.” – it’s not a myth, it’s not a laugh or manly bravado. It’s just extra misery for your family when they lose you.