Understanding Insurance

I’ve been reading over dad’s life insurance policy, trying to familiarize myself with it, and realizing that I should probably be doing the same with my own.

It also makes me realize that once the debt is gone, I may want to seriously evaluate all of our insurance needs in general. I have no long-term disability insurance on me at all, and dad doesn’t need it since he’s already officially “disabled”.

I have life insurance, and now an accidental death insurance (on both me and my dad) that will pay off our mortgage if either of us dies in an accident. And FINALLY after probably a year of trying, I got $15k worth of life insurance on my dad. That’s been a task in itself, since he has Type II diabetes. It’s expensive though, $84/month, of which dad pays about a third of and I pay the rest.

I notice that it also does not pay the full amount until 2 years after the policy starts, I guess that’s for their protection. I think the only exception is if it’s an accident. A co-worker asked me why I was thinking about all of this stuff because it’s depressing, and I told him that if I didn’t and it happened anyway, I’ll pretty much have shot myself in the foot. As it is now, when my father dies I’ll at least have enough to hopefully pay for his funeral and cremation (his request). If it happens to be an accident, then the house will be paid for. What’s nice about mortgage insurance, is there were no medical exams involved at all, they just up and give you an amount to pay off your mortgage if you die in an accident.

I’ve thought about spending time to go over my auto insurance policy to see if I can do better somewhere else, but honestly…my insurance company has been ridiculously amazing to me, I can’t really see a reason to want to switch. The price difference wouldn’t be -that- much, and the satisfaction wholly makes up for it.

My fathers car insurance, however, I may need to look into that one. He was paying like $240 or so every three months, which isn’t bad, but I think they’ve switched him to $120 or so a month, and I have no clue why. I didn’t even know about it until I approached him about me helping out with his auto insurance.