Recession forces people to reassess thier life priorities

The recession is forcing many people to reassess their life priorities, but even though there are concerns over debt and having a lower income, most haven’t got any income protection or critical illness insurance.

According to the LV= ‘Look After What You Love Index’ the nation’s top life priorities are

• family health
• ‘quality time’ with family and friends,
• personal health and
• maintaining current level of income.

The index considers people’s key life priorities and how their financial concerns and actions match these.

The top financial concerns are

• Meeting the cost of maintaining a comfortable liefestyle
• Having less money saved
• Being able to afford desired holidays
• Having enough retirement money
• Cost of servicing debt
• Having a lower income

But even though maintaining current income is a high life priority and meeting the cost of sustaining a comfortable lifestyle is a top financial concern, only 4% of adults have taken out insurance to replace their income if they were to suffer from a critical illness and be unable to work.

Getting critical illness insurance is well worth considering as is income protection cover.

LV= group chief executive, Mike Rogers, commented ‘It’s a concern that three times more people have pet insurance than have income protection cover, and only one in ten of use have critical illness insurance.

Ideally people should protect all of the important things that they love in their lives, but our study shows their actions don’t match their words. This may be due to lack of awareness or a mistaken belief that protecting income and health is very costly.

Whatever the reason, now is the time for people to review what financial protection they have in place to cover their key life priorities, and take action to bridge any gaps.’