Leslie F*cking Jones Wants You To Have Life Insurance

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Leslie F*cking Jones Wants You to Have Life Insurance

Recently, I drove east from Cincinnati to Saratoga Springs, New York, as I do twice a month; and let me state for the record that I-71 and I-90 are not interesting roads. The trip is much more tolerable when it includes catchup phone calls and audiobooks. This time, my 11-hour pilgrimage called for a weighty tome. A substantial piece of thought leadership.

An opus.

So, naturally, I settled on Leslie F*cking Jones, comedian Leslie Jones’s raw, authentic, and F-bombing memoir of how she arrived where she is today. Humor being subjective, you may wonder what the hell Leslie Jones (an eight-foot tall, black, California ghetto baller) and I (a three-foot tall, white, New York suburban bookworm) have in common that made her memoir attractive to me.  Two things:

We both think she’s absolutely hysterical; and

We both think you should have a life insurance policy.

As Leslie tells it, before she made it big, she had to work and scrounge through both of her parents’ final illnesses and deaths to pay for their funerals. Let me put emphasis on that:  She literally could not afford to grieve because she had to work and be funny to pay to give her parents a proper burial (funeral and burial: $10,000; cremation: $3,000).

As a result of these real-time life lessons, she took out a life insurance policy on her brother. She also tells of his too-early demise and the massive heartbreak it caused her. But at least she was prepared.

In the wake of this crazy trauma tsunami, Leslie Jones demands, with lots of F-bombs for emphasis, that if we really care about our loved ones, we get them a life insurance policy, even if it’s a cheap one that only covers final expenses. She’s right. How dare any of us say we love our people and then leave them on the hook for 10 grand or more while they’re in a state of grief and shock?

Financial planning requires using all the tools in the toolbox. And I don’t have a lot of patience for financial advisors who think that insurance tools (life insurance, disability income insurance, long-term care insurance, income annuities, etc.) are unnecessary or “beside the point.”  Insurance is the too-rare contractual guarantee that can make an otherwise unworkable financial outcome work. It comes to the rescue when you need it, even though you hope you never will. 

Newsflash: You are going to die. The only question is when. This fact makes life insurance not only a good idea, but a necessity.

When is the best time to purchase life insurance? When we’re young and healthy because it’s cheaper and we have fewer disqualifying medical conditions. (Being turned down for life insurance is a bummer.) Do not get sucked into ridiculous arguments about term vs. perm(anent) policies. You need both in different proportions at different times.

Term

When the runway is long and you have many years of income to replace, college education to fund, and mortgages to pay, you need a ton of term insurance. You can get a policy that starts cheap and increases every year, or one that has a fixed/level premium that does not change. The level premium is going to be more expensive at the outset.

Base your choice on your cashflow and the length of the policy (i.e., level premium policies may be shorter than non-level/fixed premium policies).

When the policy term is up, you cannot renew it at the same rate. So, if you’re 55 and still need security to get you to retirement, you may take a shorter-term policy to fill the gap. That may be expensive, so do your math when you’re young. The 20-year term policy that cost me $495/year at age 42 jumped to $9,000+/year at 62 when the level premium expired. Yikes!  (I cancelled the policy, as planned, and now I’m left with my permanent insurance. See below.)

Perm(anent)

When you’re very young, you may also incorporate permanent insurance into your financial plan.  There are different types of permanent insurance, and I know there’s a workshop in my future wherein I will explain most of them. (Full disclosure: I have whole life policies from Northwestern Mutual. I highly recommend choosing mutual companies for insurance. These are companies wherein the policyholders are the shareholders.)  

Here’s what you need to know:  Permanent insurance will pay a tax-free death benefit to your beneficiary when you die, no matter how old you are.*  If you’re young and intend to use life insurance as a tool in your financial plan, get $1 million of it. If you’re over 50 and permanent insurance has become breathtakingly expensive, get less of it. (Parents and grandparents take note: Life insurance premiums are an excellent gift to your children and grandchildren.)

If you are truly strapped, uninsurable, and just need something, get one of the $10,000 policies advertised on TV.

Everyone needs some permanent insurance. Your employer’s term insurance benefit, no matter how generous, won’t cut it. Eventually, you will leave that employment and, even if you can take the policy with you, it will become expensive. If you have the rare employer permanent policy, good on you. Hang onto that baby after you retire. If you’re already uninsurable, there are probably a few small, guaranteed policies available for you, but be careful and do your homework when acquiring these tools to ensure everything is on the up and up.

Last item on this while I’m getting my nerd on: Beware of overly optimistic “universal life insurance” illustrations and promises. Insurers can (unfortunately) illustrate assumptions that may not hold true in all interest-rate environments. I would not want to be the 85-year-old who learns she must pony up more premium to keep a policy in force. To avoid this problem, ensure that the illustration indicates that, under the most conservative interest crediting assumptions, the policy will remain in force to age 120.

Now, back to my girl, Leslie Jones. I was not entirely up front with what we have in common from listening to her memoir. She has become a wise woman with universal messages for all women of a certain agency:

She did not become a household name or make decent money until she was 47. (You can become anything you want when you believe in yourself #Onlytoolateifyoudontstartnow.) She will tell you to respect yourself with men, with jobs, and with money. (Own it, along with all the life lessons that come with it because we got this. #WeRescueOurselves.) She will tell you to respect the process of achieving excellence in your craft (whatever that is) and not to look for shortcuts because there aren’t any. (She may have been a “warrior” from the outset, but it took her 20+ years to become a “Samurai” comic.)

My advice? Use the “Want” portion of the Wish/Want/Will exercise from our New Year’s post to articulate a plan for how you will get from your wishes to your goals. What don’t you know and how will you find out? How will you build up experience? Break down the Wish into its component parts.

Then practice and practice some more. Acknowledge your incremental progress. #NotYoungNotDone

There’s so much ad-libbing (and genuine emotion) happening in Leslie’s audiobook that I don’t even know if I have to read the actual memoir to get the real story. But thank you, Leslie, for the life insurance PSA. It’s truly important. Thank you, also, for being a great role model for women. And, especially, thank you for your entertaining company on my drive. You helped me get home safely. Love your work.

Listening:  Leslie F*cking Jones by Leslie Jones on Audible

*There are a few exclusions, like acts of war, so read the fine print. 

Copyright Madrina Molly, LCC 2024

The information contained herein and shared by Madrina Molly™ constitutes financial education and not investment or financial advice.

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