Securing Your Wealth by Transferring Risk: A Personal Story

I was blessed to participate in the WIFS PHOENIX Housing Wealth Symposium in August. It was a half-day event filled with like-minded women (and some men) in beautiful downtown Scottsdale, AZ.

?We shared our knowledge with a packed room, discussing the housing market, trends, and ways to grow and protect your wealth—especially for most people, their largest asset, their home.

I had the opportunity to speak about Securing Your Wealth by Transferring Risk using a type of life insurance product known as Indexed Universal Life (IUL).

This type of policy can provide a death benefit to assist your loved ones, benefits available while you’re still alive if you become ill, and cash accumulation that you can use for supplemental retirement, a college fund, or unexpected expenses.

And the best part? All of these areas can provide tax-free money when structured under IRS Code 7702.

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It’s simple, really.

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For me, having cash benefits you can use while alive and the cash accumulation feature are paramount.

Why?

Because my family lived through a devastating experience.

My husband had a horrific accident (I won’t share the gory details—trust me, they’re gory), which resulted in one surgery to save his life and another to implant a synthetic nerve in his arm.

It was by far the scariest time of my life.

I’ll never forget that long day in the hospital.

The surgeon walked out and told me it was the worst injury he’d seen in six months. To give you an idea, the injury was caused by a skill saw mishap.

Needless to say, if a skill saw doesn’t say Playskool on it, it’s not at my house these days!

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Once we got through the trauma of the accident and focused on his recovery, the reality of the financial situation began to sink in.

Medical bills started arriving, and with them, a new wave of stress—one that added to the emotional toll we were already facing.

And here’s the kicker—his health insurance refused to pay the hospital and medical bills. You can just imagine how many zeros were on those bills.

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If you’ve ever been in a situation like this, you know your brain is not fully functioning.

All you can do is make it through one day at a time. At the time, we had one daughter enrolled at Arizona State University, and our youngest was still in high school.

My sole focus was to keep our world moving forward.

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But with bills piling up—ASU, the hospital, doctors, mortgage payments—things got tight.

Really tight.

All I could think of was to pull money from our retirement fund. I withdrew a large amount from my IRA, and not only did I pay taxes on it, but I also got hit with a 10% penalty because I wasn’t 59?.

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This experience is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about having something in place to protect your retirement savings from unforeseen events.

Trust me, if I had that insurance policy in place at the time, life would have been a lot easier.

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Do I have this type of insurance policy now? Absolutely!

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September is Insurance Awareness Month, and I can’t stress enough how important it is to prepare for the unexpected.

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If you’re unsure about your insurance needs or have any questions, don’t wait.

Reach out to me or another trusted advisor today.

I know firsthand that you don’t want to be caught off guard when life throws you a curveball.

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Are you ready for the unexpected?