Burgess Family of three...for now

A look into what we ordinarily do...sometimes not that ordinary.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Some things are hard, and then they get harder...

For those of you who don't know I work for a State Farm Agent. I am one of the two sales girls there. We do auto, home, health, disability, and life insurance. I have to say at first, when I took this job I was hesitant to get into sales...but as I learned more about the industry, the company, and the people, I started to really like my job. My hang up with sales has always been that I am not good at selling something to someone that they don't need....so I guess that's why I enjoy my job so much, because I actually feel like I am selling people things that they need. Insurance is one of those things that really does protect us.

So, one of the things that I do is I make sure I talk to all my clients about life insurance....(and I know that life insurance sales-people have a bad rap, but I am really not sure why, I guess.) I wanted to share this story with you guys because it is something that maybe we don't talk about often enough and should!

Jacob (name changed) is one of our clients who has been insured with us for a while now. He has his cars and home with us. He's such a nice guy and every time he comes in we sit and chat about how life is treating us. On several occassions we have tried to discuss life insurance with him and tried to explain the importance of it to him. We'd ask him "Jacob, who would take care of your final expenses if something were to happen to you tomorrow?". He just rather not worry about that he'd say. "Jacob, someday you are going to settle down and you are going to need life insurance in place for your family's needs, why not get it now while is less expensive and available to you?". He'd worry about it later. Well, he called us up the other day to tell us that his fiance is moving in with him and we needed to add her car to his household, and he wanted to talk about life insurance for the two of them now. Well, here's the kicker....about 8 months back he was in a very bad accident on his motorcycle. He was in a comma for a few days and has experienced slight brain damage amongst a few other things. We had to call an underwriter to find out if he was insurable with the health complications he's had, and then we had to break the news to him that we couldn't offer him life insurance anymore....he's not insurable.

Here's another story that another agent shared with us yesterday:

The Harris Family (name changed), is one of the families that they insure who has their cars, atv's, house, rental property, and jewelry insured with them. It's a husband and a wife, and 3 kids ranging from 17-6 years old. Because they have been with them for so long, they have notated in the account the several times they have tried to get them into the office to discuss a life insurance plan for their family. Both the husband and wife had objections every time, "we have it at work", "we can't afford it right now", "you will need to talk to my husband about it", "ask me after the holidays".......etc.

Well, it was their oldest son who was driving out in Queencreek in the family rhino, he had his younger brother and a neighbor kid with him. They were on a dirt road getting ready to cross a major road, when a car came by and clipped them. One of the three boys didn't have his seatbelt on so he was flung from the rhino, and seriously injured. The other two boys, although they had their seatbelts on, were badly injured. The following day, Mr. Harris was in his agent's office discussing the accident, reviewing his coverages, and filing a claim. It also happened to be Mr. and Mrs. Harris's wake up moment that they needed to sit down and discuss the family's plan to get life insurance.

Losing a loved one is hard enough, if you add the financial burden that they leave behind, it only makes it harder!

Please take a moment to look around you and see the people you love who would be so seriously affected by your absence. Take the time to protect them!

This could happen to any of us:
New 2001 Beetle sandwiched between two trailers carrying half a modular home, on 9/17/01. The front truck stopped for a road block, but the rear one couldn't stop (didn't have his "Jake brake" set properly for the load he was carrying.

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