Insurance I have found to be very important, both short term and long term. Insurance is for hedge purposes and not profit purposes so I always try look at the worst case I'm insuring myself against. certain types of insurances such as medical aid and vehicle insurance, are required by employment equity laws and vehicle financiers in a lot of regions in the world. For long term products, it's important to start early. I can't really tell you a lot about my long term insurance products, except that they are currently invested in high yielding investments. Insurance is a great long term passive strategy, considering the amount of work and regulatory requirements that go into the management of investment portfolios.
I think that some people find investing in insurance to be part of an investment plan, however, I think there are better rates of return with other investments. I just think it is important to have personally though, especially as you get older. We all want to live as comfortably as possible, and insurance can help us to do this. I am not sure about Long Term Care insurance though, there seems to be many variables with this.
I just wanted to share something I've just learned recently. My client's wife has just undergone ovarian surgery because of a tumor and she's now scheduled for brain surgery after she recovers from the previous one. I just saw them 3 days ago in a gathering and the wife really looked very weak. The problem is that she has no insurance of her own because it was too late when she became interested in applying for one. Had she applied earlier for a health insurance, she could have at least been assisted with her hospital bills.
That's a sad story. Some years back, my husband was complaining of undefined abdominal pains. What I did was to take a health insurance for 5,000 pesos (one year). He used that card for the successive checkups. Fortunately, the diagnosis was severe gastritis. When we computed the expenses paid by the health card, it was less than 5,000 pesos. In other words, we didn't benefit much from that insurance.
Health cards are okay but they don't really provide you that much of a protection compared to a regular health insurance. The problem with these stand alone accident and health products that you will be paying on single payments and are relatively cheap is that, if nothing happens to you within the span of 1 year under the coverage of that product, then your money is also considered to be "used up". In short terms, the money you have paid also disappears as you finish your 1-year contract, so you would have to pay another 5,000 pesos for the next year if you still want another round of coverage. With the regular health insurance, the price per year is higher and the minimum time frame for paying is 3-years but you'll be sure that your money is in tact and earning more year in and year out. And if you get sick, the company will render the coverage you applied for without touching your invested money.
