I lost my father when I was 18. It took me 9 months to admit how deeply it affected me.
I’ve still not fully recovered although, I am not sure someone ever recovers from a loss so great.
He was a great father. He built me up, spoke positivity into my life. He was far from perfect, but he was mine. And in many ways, that’s better than perfect.
I became a parent a month after I turned 21 and I could see through my fathers’ eyes why he loved me so much.
When I was 24, I was talking to a friend about my dad and he asked me, “What do you think would happen to your wife and your daughter if you died?”
For whatever reason, I hadn’t thought about it until then and I realized that they would be devastated like my mother and I were when my dad died.
My wife and my daughter would be devastated from the loss emotionally, from the loss of all of what could’ve been, the loss of me attending my daughter’s graduation, her wedding, and the loss of me being able to play with my grandkids.
Also, the loss of MANY years that my wife and I could’ve enjoyed together…
They could also potentially be dramatically impacted financially since close to 40 years of my income would be gone in just one single moment. I thought about how, had I lived, and not died my daughter’s life could turn out dramatically different. But how could I control that?
When this friend of mine asked me how much life insurance I owned, I had to admit to him that I didn’t own any. I just never really thought about it before.
My father never attended my wedding, and he never met my wife. He never met his granddaughter nor watched me graduate from college. He was physically gone, but I thought of him multiple times every day knowing that some of the choices he made before he died did provide me and my new family a path to accomplish a lot of those things without worrying about how we were going to pay for them.
There’s a good chance I wouldn’t be a financial advisor if it had not been for the planning that he and my mother did.
So, if you’re a parent without life insurance or if you don’t have enough, I highly recommend that you consider looking into getting it – or getting more of it.
If you need someone’s help with knowing how to get it or how much to get, our team is here for you.
Just send us a quick note through our Contact page and we will get back to you quickly.
Because if you do leave this life early, your family won’t ever be able to replace you as the daughter or son, the mentor, the mother or father, and the only thing you can do is make sure that your loved ones are taken care of financially.
And that check that your family gets, should that horrible thing ever happen, well, that check would show them you were thinking of them when you made the decision to buy life insurance.
That check could be the last love letter you ever write to your family.
Today’s tip:
Get some life insurance. If you have some, great! Get more! Don’t wait. Get it now so you can feel better knowing that you’ve done what you can to protect your family.
Written by CJ Burnett, Co-Owner of Florida Veterinary Advisors
Tom Seeko and CJ Burnett are Registered Representatives and Financial Advisors of Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS). 4200 West Cypress Street #700, Tampa, FL 33607. Security products/services and advisory services offered through PAS, a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Tom Seeko and CJ Burnett are a Financial Representatives of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, NY. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. Florida Veterinary Advisors is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or Guardian. PAS is a member FINRA, SIPC. 2021-117826 Exp 03/2023