This week didn’t go well for me. My son fell sick and we brought him to the paediatrician. While he’s ok with taking the medicine, his nap and overnight sleep got affected. Coupled with the effects of having the cold and cough, he has been more cranky and difficult at times. He also couldn’t go to preschool and had to stay home with us or be at my parents-in-law’s place place during the day. Fun times. It doesn’t help that my wife also fell sick (from my son) but she couldn’t take days off to rest because major issues came up at work that she had to be involved in. So she was struggling to get through each day and couldn’t help out as much with the household workload.
As you can imagine, this household workload starts spilling over to my helper and I. She’s not getting enough rest because my son can’t sleep properly at night and keeps waking her up. And she doesn’t have that window in the morning (when my son would normally be at preschool) to catch up on household chores and get some rest. Before long, she’s also not feeling well but it’s not as bad as my wife. Not forgetting all 3 of us took the 2nd vaccine jabs during these 2 weeks so none of us were really at 100% to begin with. I ended up running around making sure everyone is fine and things are still being done. We relied heavily on my parents-in-law to take care of my son on some days and even for food as well because my family was too tired to cook in the evening. So we just ate leftovers from their place and it was enough for us.
All it takes is for my son to fall sick to reveal whether the support infrastructure for my family is in place. It’s a test of how much flexibility we have in our jobs when working from home, whether we can still manage the household workload when family members are unwell, how willing are our parents to step in to help out. We were obviously under more stress & pressure than usual and it showed. All of us got frustrated, angry and annoyed more easily. Conversations could be short & tense and usually with a screaming kid in the background. I can’t remember the last time I had a bad week like this on the home front so I’m looking forward to the weekend for it to be over.
Anyway, I still had to squeeze out time to manage the financial affairs of my family. Other than buying into the dip/correction on cryptos and Chinese tech stocks recently, another area of focus that is not investing came to my attention. I have been reading up on insurance and realised that not only is my knowledge of it low, my family has been really careless with our insurance coverage. Perhaps it’s my son growing up but it just hit me that he’s actually a dependent. I mean, not that he wasn’t one before when he was a baby. I just feel it more now as he gets more interactive and I realise he’s depending on us to make sure we have him covered until he becomes a working adult.
Both my wife and I have personal and corporate medical insurance coverage. This has helped to cover our visits to the doctor, paediatrician and hospital. Next up is life insurance. We have whole life insurance policies that were bought by our parents when we were young that we have taken over the payment of premiums after starting work. The payout or sum assured in the event of death and terminal illness is low because the whole life insurance policy was bought when we were kids and had no dependents of our own. Even after we started working and got married, there was no arguably no need to increase the life insurance coverage because both of us had jobs (parents were still working), not much financial obligations and still no dependents.
Things change once we have a kid. Our parents have retired and no longer draw salary income. We now have a dependent and will have a big mortgage. The low payout or sum assured in the event of death and terminal illness from the whole life insurance policies is not sufficient. And I need their cash surrender values for our private property purchase downpayment that is coming up in the next few months anyway. So I have started the process of surrendering my whole life insurance policy first to see what’s the amount that is credited into my bank account. I have also initiated the purchase of a term life insurance policy that has a much bigger payout or sum assured in the event of death and terminal illness. The coverage is for 25 years and that should cover my prime earning years as well as when my son becomes a working adult. The annual premium payment is almost the same but there will not be a surrender value for the term life insurance policy. I will probably do the same for my wife after this.
LYL says
Would be good to consider adding accelerated Critical Illness rider to your term assurance plan to cover against major critical illnesses.
Finance Smiths says
Thanks for the tip! I’m not adding that critical illness rider for now but will think about it.
Tan Siak Lim says
While whole life policy has cash value, it’s never intended for investment and early surrender. It’s meant to provide coverage for the whole of life, especially for critical illness which is really needed when one is old. Term policy is good as a booster to cover say until age 65 or 70, but not for life.
Some people argue that you don’t need critical illness coverage when you are old, because you are already retired and don’t need to cover loss of income. That is not true, because you still need it for potential alternative medical treatment or experimental drugs, or long-term outpatient specialist treatment.
Finance Smiths says
That’s a good point you made! I’m sticking with my buy term invest the rest strategy for now but will consider what you highlighted to me.