We just always assume that life will always be good. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Today, let’s talk about protection, let’s talk about money, and let’s talk about choices that you don’t necessarily get to make. Each and every year the government comes up with new rules and regulations on how to protect you in your automobile. The average price of a car during 2021 was slightly more than $45,000. The price of all of the safety gear, you know, all of that stuff that makes you safe inside your automobile, whether it’s how your car will crunch and protect yourself inside the car during an accident, whether it’s the airbags, whether it’s the seat belts, whether it’s the child proof locks so they don’t jettison out of the back seat while you’re driving to the grocery store- there’s a cost to all of that. The average price during 2021 was actually $1800 dollars. Divide one into the other, and you will find out that the average price of just the safety gear in your automobile is roughly 4% of the overall cost and that doesn’t include your license, the titling, and the taxes. It is just the manufacturer’s suggested retail price on the show room floor.
Why do I talk about this? Because it’s all about the safety factor getting me from point A to point B safely so I can live yet another day without dying or without being permanently disabled. Imagine what the world would be like if those safety features were not part of your automobile. I know in the state that I live in I am amazed every single year when they publish the amount of people that are dead on arrival due to auto accidents. Every single year the state of Wisconsin it far exceeds 700 people and that’s just the number of people who have died on the road. That does not include the people that have become disabled. Imagine the amount of money you could safe if you could say ‘I just don’t want those safety features’ but sometimes you literally have to have them built in to try to keep us all as safe as possible.
So, when I think of the safety features of an automobile, I think of the safety features regarding your own income. Let’s say you make $100,000 per year. Well, that’s a $1,000,000 over ten years or $2,000,000 over twenty years, and over your lifetime that might be $3,000,000-5,000,000 if you also input the cost of inflation in your calculations. So, here’s the question. If you already know that the price of safety features in an automobile is 4%, would you, could you, should you invest at least 4% of your annual income to make certain that your annual income will continue on if you become disabled or when you die? It’s not a question of if; I don’t think any of us will be getting out alive. Would you not take that same small percentage to make certain that your spouse, your family, your legacy continues, and so your own self-respect and dignity continues in the event of your death or a disability. Hard. Hard conversations to have that no one wants to have, but the sense of security, the sense of knowing that it’s going to be okay- is that worth the 4%, and so you can say ‘life is good’?
If you would like to learn more about these life insurance concepts, explore the investmentsdonthug.com website or go to Amazon.com and you can get a printed copy of Mark’s book when you type in “Investment’s Don’t Hug” or it is also available on Audible.
