Setting investment goals is a matter of life and death

In this column, I frequently emphasize the importance of setting investment goals in order to provide for your children’s college education and your own retirement.

To accomplish those goals, there are certain requirements. First and foremost, you must establish your goals and objectives. That’s pretty obvious.

But then you need to establish the parameters necessary to meet your defined goals. That could take some work. And, finally, you should periodically measure your progress toward achieving the goals.

At that point you may need to adjust your parameters or revise your goals. But make no mistake, goal setting and investing go hand in hand.

But what happens if something goes terribly wrong and you meet your maker long before you anticipated? September is Life Insurance Awareness Month and life insurance is the part of planning that few want to discuss.

Discussing death is never an easy topic, but it’s a vital part of financial planning. When my wife and I were raising our sons, they frequently lamented, “This isn’t fair.” My guess is that anyone who has raised children has heard this or a similar type comment. We often chuckled at such complaints, but we tried to do our best as parents.

In reality, though, life isn’t fair. It doesn’t always work out the way we want. A good example is being passed over for a well-deserved promotion. Then there’s illness and, even worse, an unexpected death.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for a family to own life insurance. Money is made two ways. You can work for it and you can put your money to work for you. Life insurance simply brings money to the table when you’re gone. Because, even if you’re no longer alive, you still want your family to have a roof over their head, food on the table and the means to achieve their goals.

Quite often, when a local tragedy makes the news, you hear about a fund-raiser to help the family. Although fund-raisers are admirable, they’re not something you can count on. I still think it’s best to plan and prepare for the unanticipated while you’re still alive and healthy.

Back when the Super Bowl was at the Pontiac Silverdome, one of the quarterbacks was Boomer Esiason. I mention this because his mother died at a young age without life insurance. Boomer watched as his father worked extra hard to provide for the family.

When he became a parent, one of his first purchases was life insurance. Today, he’s the spokesperson for Life Happens, an organization that highlights the importance of owning life insurance.

Statistics indicate that thirty percent of households in the U.S. have no life insurance at all. That happens to be an all-time low for life insurance ownership in this country. And it gives me a bad feeling.

It means that more and more families will be turning to the government for financial assistance at a time when Uncle Sam is hurting financially.

Life insurance is not only an unpleasant topic to discuss; it can also be quite confusing. There are all kinds of insurance companies and all kinds of policies, and the language can be confusing.

I hope you take the responsible route and make certain your life insurance program is in order.