There’s an old Irish and Scots word, which has now largely fallen into disuse – to ’spey’. It was widely used a few hundred years ago, and it meant to look into the future, to predict what destiny would bring. What has this got to do with critical illness insurance? Read on.
The fact that we feel able to do without the word ’spey’ in this millennium might indicate a modern preoccupation, not with our future, but with what’s happening today, in the here and now.
I came across some interesting figures today in relation to life and critical illness insurance – and taking life insurance cover is, I suppose, the financial equivalent of ’speying’, of looking into the future, and preparing for what destiny may bring.
The numbers I found (courtesy of Friends Provident) claim that, over the last year, 77% of men have been ignoring some evidence of ill-health, hoping instead that their health problems, such as they were, would simply go away.
Now, we’ve written many times in these pages that the likelihood of a man becoming seriously ill during his career is about 1 in 4, and 1 in 5 for a woman. Despite that, around 87% of us haven’t got critical illness insurance, and more of us take out pet insurance than take out life insurance on ourselves.
(What does that mean, anyway, insuring your pet? Income Protection Insurance? Mortgage Protection, so the kennel doesn’t get repossessed?)
This means that, while 77% of us are ignoring a health condition, just 13% of us are covered for losing our wage, and all the costs involved if we fall ill.
And even if we insist that a serious illness will never happen to us – then let’s think about life insurance and we have to admit that, eventually, we or our family are very likely to get payback on a life insurance policy.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow – but some day …..
So. What needs to be done?
Spey me an answer to that one.
