I was furious. I was ready to cancel every single insurance policy we had and sue them!

Some people stack up canned food in their basement and go-bags in their cars, while some keep a stash of batteries, water, and cash. Disaster prep means something different to everyone. My disaster would be one of my children or Kieran getting seriously ill. I would worry about how easily our family could be devastated financially by us not being able to work if one of us had a serious accident or illness occurred. What if one of us dies and leaves the other one and the kids with nothing to live on as they try to rebuild a new life. Sometimes I would feel very morbid as I dwelled on those huge fears, but truthfully we cannot control the future or unknown factors. We can though, look life’s grim possibilities in the face, intelligently plan ahead for our loved ones and then relax a bit and try to live life to the fullest every next minute.

We have never regretted having term life insurance and an umbrella policy for our house. As for the real fear I have, having lost loved ones to cancer, we have a Cancer policy with AFLAC. Kieran sells AFLAC and we use it, for real.

Anyone who knows my family’s story knows that we live by Dave Ramsey’s financial policies, it’s because of my dad introducing us to “Uncle Dave” and his financial advice that we have had a plan and feel financially secure against emergencies. Having enough insurance, and the RIGHT insurance, is one of the most important steps in our path to financial security and peace.

When we started our journey with “Uncle Dave” we had two kids, a mortgage, lots of debt and we were absolutely broke despite Kieran being a teacher and me having a thriving small business. We didn’t know we were broke though, we thought that everyone lived with crazy debt and beyond their means. As we started to really embrace the debt snow-ball and felt the weight of debt start to crush less, we also started evaluating other aspects of our finances.

I sat down with the Financial Peace University book and compared all of our insurance policies to the guidelines called for in the book. After about 2 minutes, I was absolutely furious. I could not believe how much we were paying for useless coverage, especially on our Universal Life policy. We had marched into our insurance agent in California and gotten life insurance policies right when we got married. We were SO responsible. And then as I was sitting there I realized that if I died, Kieran would have enough money from my life insurance to throw a nice funeral, buy some groceries and make a couple of mortgage payments. Then what? He would be a single dad with 2 tiny kids and have to work around the clock to pay for someone else to raise the kids while he worked for their necessities. It would be the same for me if he died, except his policy was a little bigger than mine, so maybe I could buy the next kid with a birthday on the calendar a present. That made me furious.

I was ready to cancel every single insurance policy we had and sue them!

Once I calmed down a bit, I realized that what I really needed to do was just change our policies. Then I was really glad to have an insurance agent to change it all for me. I told her exactly what kind of coverage I wanted, basically reading it to her out of my book. She didn’t bat an eyelash. She wanted me to have what I wanted and to keep me as a customer. I did, however, let her know that her selling us on Universal Life insurance was a pretty mediocre move and I was pretty mad about it. I think, however, I was more mad at myself for being gullible and under-informed on the topic when we first went shopping for insurance.

I could go on and on about the process of fine-tuning our money habits, its an ongoing learning opportunity (battle) for us because we have some pretty sloppy money habits that we try to vigilantly fight against, habits like: margaritas, eating out, red wine, smoked salmon, seasonal pillows, pretty dresses, organic face serums etc. (These are mostly me.) I won’t though, because despite those habits, by returning to Dave Ramsey’s principles as often as possible we were able to make it through the births of 2 more babies, a pandemic, a small-business collapse, major post-partum depression, temporary insanity home-schooling, a cross-country move, poverty level income, weird job losses, high medical bills for various medium level issues, and we still have a paid-off house, 2 paid-off cars, no credit card/mortgage debt, and a small emergency fund. There is a good amount of peace-of-mind in knowing that we have shelter and transportation covered.

Here in Kentucky we have State Farm Insurance. We have business policies, home-owner’s, umbrella liability, term life, and a fancy one used for heirloom valuables (like my engagement ring that we actually discovered might be made of glass, but I digress...) We have a lovely agent who was more than willing to build us policies to our Dave Ramsey specifications and feels like a partner in our financial life. With AFLAC we have Cancer, dental, vision, and supplemental life policies. We are insured to the hilt, but with the right policies. Now, if something awful were to happen, it would still be awful, but we won’t have to worry about money too.

I wish you your heart's fill of coffee today! Katherine (Kieran's amazing wife)