How much insurance do you need in your 30s? You’ve probably had adequate car insurance in place since you started driving, but now that you’re in your 30s you’ve got a lot more to protect. And a lot more at stake.
Here are three insurance policies you’re going to want to have in place in your 30s:
1. Property Insurance
By the time you reach your 30s, you’ve probably started accumulating some stuff. You’ve likely upgraded your living situation, home furnishings, electronics, hobby and sporting equipment, and even your clothing and accessories.
Which means it’s time to start protecting your property with either homeowners or renters insurance.
Homeowners Insurance
Your 30s is likely a time when you’ll become a homeowner. In the US, 60% of people aged 35 - 44 are homeowners; the average age of a first-time homeowner is 35.4 years old. Becoming a homeowner in your 30s means you’ll need to get acquainted with homeowners insurance; coverage that is typically required by lenders if you’re going to finance your home.
Homeowners insurance protects your physical home and the stuff inside it. A standard homeowners policy will help cover the costs to repair, replace, or rebuild if your home is damaged by a covered incident.
Imagine a fire breaks out in your home. Homeowners insurance is designed to help you pay for the cost of repairing, rebuilding, or replacing the physical parts of your home damaged by flame and smoke. Think walls, ceilings, flooring, cabinets, and fixtures. It’s also designed to help cover the cost of replacing damaged belongings, such as furnishings, draperies, carpets and rugs, electronics, and even clothing.
Renters Insurance
Not everyone is ready to purchase a home in their 30s. If you rent, you should be able to protect your investment in the home furnishings, appliances, computers and electronics, sporting equipment, clothing, accessories, art, and jewelry you’ve invested in.
In other words, you’ve still got stuff — even if you haven’t purchased the structure where you keep it.
Renters insurance is designed to protect your belongings from covered perils, such as fire, theft, and vandalism.
Imagine coming home from work one day to find your front door wide open, front window smashed to pieces, the house ransacked and your valuables missing. Your 60” flat-screen TV, gaming console, laptop, desktop, tablet, mountain bike, skis, and jewelry: all gone.
Your landlord’s property insurance is only going to protect your landlord’s investment in the physical structure of the home. In this instance, it may help to replace the broken window and repair damage done to the door frame.
But your landlord’s insurance isn’t going to cover any of your missing belongings.
Renters insurance offers you protection for the stuff you’ve worked hard to buy as well as the financial investment you’ve poured into it.
2. Health Insurance
You may have still been covered under your parents’ health plans while you were in your 20s. But now that you’re in your 30s, it’s time to cover yourself.
Your 30s is a time when you want to start paying closer attention to maintaining your health. You may find yourself more stressed with work and family responsibilities. Those jeans that looked so great in college may not fit quite the same any longer. You may be thinking of starting a family; the number of 1st-time moms in their 30s has tripled since the 70s.
Preventative care is super important in your 30s to monitor your health and keep an eye out for possible indicators of health issues. Health insurance covers preventative care visits and helps you pay for any unexpected illnesses or injuries that may arise.
Even if you’re in peak physical condition, you’re still at risk for the unexpected. The gym routine that’s keeping your body fat percentage at a healthy level could lead to a joint injury or muscle strain. The weekend cycling excursions could result in a collision with a new driver.
Unfortunately, an unexpected medical incident can be financially crippling.
One academic study found that 66.5% of all bankruptcies were tied to medical issues —either because of high costs for care or time out of work. The researchers found an estimated 530,000 families turn to bankruptcy each year because of medical issues and bills.
Don’t gamble with your health in your 30s. You’re not as young as you used to be, and all it takes is one accidental injury to land you in the hospital with mounting medical bills. Get covered and you won’t have to worry about unexpected medical surprises — or what they might do to your savings.
3. Life Insurance
There’s a chance that you’ve got someone depending on you now.
Whether it’s a spouse, committed partner, or a kid (or two, three, or more), your 30s can be a time of increased responsibility.
What would happen to the people who depend on you if something were to happen to you?
Life insurance can help you protect your loved ones from the financial impact of losing you. Your loved ones could use your life insurance benefits to pay off unexpected medical bills or the cost of a funeral. They could pay off debt, keep paying the mortgage or save money for college expenses.
Term life insurance is an extremely popular policy for people in their 30s. With term life, you choose a term (duration) of coverage, ranging from 5, 10, 20, or 30 years. During that term, you make your premium payments and your family receives your death benefits if something should happen to you. At the end of your term, you can either walk away from your policy or, in many cases, convert your policy to whole life coverage.
You can choose a term that ensures your family receives benefits when they need it the most: while your children are young and still living at home, for example.
Life insurance doesn’t have to be a costly investment. Term life insurance can cost as low as a dollar — or at least less than a coffee — a day. That’s an extremely affordable way to ensure you can still take care of the people who depend on you, no matter what may come your way.
Welcome to Your 30s
You may still have felt like a kid in your 20s, but in your 30s your responsibilities and financial investments have leveled up. You’ve invested your hard-earned money into nicer belonging, perhaps purchasing a home, getting married, or even having some kids.
The people and things you want to protect – including your own health – mean that it’s time you seriously start thinking about the ways you can put insurance to work.
Talk to an experienced insurance professional to find out just how affordable it can be to protect your property, health, and family with the right insurance coverage — and you’ll thank yourself in the decades to come.