What I Did For Love
I made the unlikely jump from music journalist to insurance blogger a year ago, and this was in part because I now had
a child to support. Music journalism had taken me to some of the most exhilarating after-parties, tour buses and concerts that any 20-something could hope to experience, yet all of that melted into oblivion the first time I met my daughter’s gaze.
Children make you soft. Your cool, wise opinions melt like glaciers in the sunshine of their eyes. And so I landed a content writing job, where I found to my delight that insurance and technology are every bit as fascinating as music.
With my new job came a huge influx of knowledge about insurance, and I was sometimes surprised. One of the biggest shocks to my system was during a phone call with a client who told me that you can get life insurance for something like $20 a month.
That night, I shopped for life insurance policies with the same zeal that I would have formerly reserved for the hunt of an obscure, limited-edition Robert Johnson vinyl. Children … they do change us.
When it came time to buy the policy I had chosen, my infant daughter woke up with those break-your-heart whimpers that every mother lives and dies by. I nursed her back to sleep, laid her down, and returned to my computer—only to find that my enthusiasm for my newfound life insurance policy had dwindled and drawn its last breath.
What was going on here? Shouldn’t I be thrilled with the chance to protect my daughter’s future for about $20 a month? Shouldn’t I be screaming this message from the rooftops of every daycare in town?
And then it hit me … I didn’t want to buy a life insurance policy because that would be an admission that maybe something could happen to me, leaving my daughter alone. I would never curl her hair or yell at her for calling boys. She would never lie on my lap and cry because one of those boys had been mean to her. For some reason, brushing the whole idea off felt safer. I would protect her with the strength of my denial.
Then I watched this video of Tracy Basden.
Yesterday, I called an agent here in Georgia. He found me a 30-year term life policy. It’s $25 a month for $330,000 in coverage. My rate will never change. I’ve experienced a lot of sticker shock since I became a parent. And this was sticker shock, too—but the good kind.
I’m not a perfect parent. My daughter doesn’t eat 100% healthy, organic food. And maybe I let her watch too many cartoons. But you know what? Buying life insurance is one thing that I know I did right.
