Life Insurance: A word that is usually shunned by most people. Why is that so? One reason might be that life insurance agents are pushy in their recommendations for life insurance product, making clients feel uncomfortable, even though they know that it is important in their financial lives. Another reason is that people do not believe that mishaps will happen to them. They do not see that protecting themselves, their family, and their wealth from unfortunate life events such as death, disability, illnesses, heavy medical bills, is of any priority. They would rather use their savings on material needs and wants, or investing for the future to accumulate more wealth. This thinking is very common amongst the young people. They feel good, keep a healthy lifestyle and everything is well for them. What could go wrong?
Let me share with you a true story. My own story…
I was born in 1980 into a humble middle working class family. My father was a teacher and my mother was a nurse. As the eldest child, my parents had high hopes on me and doted on me. When I was 6 my younger brother was born. I knew I was a big brother and had to take care of my younger brother. In the end, it was my younger brother who took care of me and saved my life.
Things turned a different route in 1988. I had mumps for a period of time. My parents took good care of me and expected me to turn well soon however, things got more complicated. My legs started to swell and my mum suspected something was wrong so she took me to see a doctor. I was diagnosed with kidney problem. Being young, I did not know the seriousness of the illness until I saw the pale and worried faces on my parents. I was not only diagnosed with kidney problem, the real cause of the problem was lupus. Lupus is an auto immune disease that starts a civil war in my own body, with the antibodies attacking its own cells. My parents were at a state of loss, not knowing what they should do.
A lot of questions went through my parents’ mind, “What will my future be?” “How much will be the medical expenses” To make matters worse, my father did not believe in buying life insurance for me when I was young, so we had to pay for the medical bills ourselves. This added on addition burden to my parent’s expenses. I felt that I was a burden to my parents too and there is nothing I could do to make things better. The only thing I could do is to study hard and support myself in the future.
With God’s grace, I managed to complete my secondary school education and went on to junior college. However, I had to go for regular routine check up for my condition. Every month my parents have to spend about three thousand dollars for the medical bills. Due to the care I received from my doctor, I was inspired to become a doctor and save the lives of people. However, it was a far fetched goal for me and I only managed to enter into the Pharmacy course in university.
In university was the turning point of my life. As the saying goes, when a problem comes, it does not come alone. Soon I suffered a serious relapse of my illness and I was bedridden for one whole month. And I was in depression. Without a choice I had to quit school and stay in hospital with other patients.
In hospital, I saw the suffering of many patients whose family has deserted them because the medical bills were too huge for the family to bear. Some of them have no family and have to depend of social services. Others have no money to treat their illness and their health deteriorates day by day. A patient with diabetes even had to have both his legs amputated due to improper care. After witnessing the different heart wrenching scenarios, I realized one hard and real fact, “Life is unpredictable. You will never know what you are going to get.” I understood the value of being ready for the crisis in life. If life crisis such as major illnesses hits us without warning, what we have planned and expected life to be will be destroyed and gone forever. In some cases, our spouses may even run away due to the financial burden to take care of us. We may then have to depend on charity foundations and that also is not guaranteed. If all things fail, we may even die. The only solution is to insure our life and health when we can still be insured, to ensure that financial resources will be there when we desperately need them.
That was the reason I joined the insurance and financial advisory business in 2003 when I quit the Pharmacy course. It was after much thought and reflection. It was not because I gave up on my dream on helping patients medically. It was because I realized that not matter how much we prevent people from being struck by serious illness, there will always be victims of life unfortunate events. Illness, accidents, disabilities, deaths, will always exist on this earth. What we really need to do is not only to prevent sicknesses, but to be ready if we ever get struck by one. And the most important thing is financial resources. My dream was to become a doctor to help people get well. Now, I am ensuring that people have sufficient resources to seek the best medical treatment. If there were adequate doctors but inadequate resources, the patients will still die. It is a very realistic world.
Therefore, in my opinion, life is fragile and mishaps can happen to anyone of us. Of course, when we dream and plan for our lives, we should plan for the best that no bad thing will happen to us. But as reality shows, we do need to prepare ourselves for unexpected events. Insurance is but merely a tool for us to cushion ourselves against financial disasters if anything untoward happens to us or our family. A good financial advisor will surely recommend insurance instruments to protect your wealth from uncertainties. These instruments include term insurance, whole life plans, investment linked plans, medical schemes, etc. Much information can be gleaned in this area on the internet or from your nearest friendly neighborhood financial advisor. However, I personally feel that you should not spend more than 15% of your income on your insurance portfolio, as it is for wealth protection and does not help to accumulate wealth at an optimal rate of return.
So to continue my story…
I also saw in my encounter with patients was that patients like myself who are seriously ill and yet have no insurance have no money to seek medical treatment. Where do we turn too? Fortunately, there were foundations such as NKF and KDF to help desperate kidney patients. Previously, I was undergoing dialysis at the NKF. Now, after a kidney transplant of which the donor was my younger brother, I have a new lease of life once again and a deep sense of conviction for my purpose in life, that is to help patients like myself to overcome their illnesses and limitations. However, without these foundations like NKF, I will probably die of my illness due to lack of money to seek quality medical treatment. Before 1970, people with kidney failure will die as dialysis was very expensive. It costs about $3000 per month. And in other countries with no charity foundations and no proper medical treatment, lives are lost as if it was of little value. Therefore, I am now determined to set up a foundation. This foundation will help thousands of poor and needy people, not only in kidney problems, but also in other illnesses such as cancer and others. If I was a doctor, I can only save a few lives that come along my path. However, if I owned a foundation, I will be able to save thousands or even millions of lives. The only way I could do that is to become wealthy. And I believe I am well on the way to fulfill my vision and my destiny.
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