Scantlebury Wealth Management

During my career, I have been asked a simple question repeatedly: why should a twenty year old buy life insurance?  In many ways, this is the easiest and hardest financial planning question to answer. For the answer to the question lies in statistics, expectations, hopes and the way in which we wish to live our lives. Statistically, it is quite clear that most people in the Western World will not die tomorrow. The Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Children and Their Families noted that while those between the age of 0 and 19 made up 29 percent of the population in 1999, they only made up 2% of all deaths.  In fact, if you look at statistics from Canada, the US and the UK, you see a remarkably similar trend. From birth to the pre-teen years, the likelihood of death drops off dramatically. Or put differently, based on the StatsCanada data from 2014-2018, from birth to age 1, 4.5 Canadian babies out of 1,000 will die. However...

So you are graduating from school and you want to save for your future. You go to a financial planner and you say I have $75 dollars a month to put away, can you make a recommendation? I have come across this situation more than you can imagine and my answer has changed over the years.  Today, more often than not though, I would probably give the same answer. If you have a job with a group plan which has disability coverage, I would suggest that someone spends $25/mth on insurance and put $50 into a savings “fund”. That $25 a month should get you a small life insurance policy as well as either a small critical illness or catastrophic drug policy. The $50 should be put away in a GIC or accumulation annuity until you have $2,000 dollars. Once you accumulate $2,000, you can put money into a non-registered money market mutual fund or money market segregated fund until you accumulate $10,000. From there, in association with your GIC or non-registered funds, you can graduate...