Understand your insurance before you buy it.

Most people buy insurance the way they renew a utility: once, under time pressure, from whoever asked first. Then it sits untouched for a decade while the mortgage, the children and the job all change around it.

Almost everything that goes wrong afterwards traces back to that. A policy sized before a house was bought. A beneficiary never updated after a divorce. Term coverage that quietly expired at sixty-five. An annuity signed without anyone reading out the surrender period. None of these are exotic failures. They are the ordinary result of nobody sitting down and going through it.

That is the work. I go through what you already have, what you actually owe and who depends on you, and we find the gap before talking about any product. Sometimes the answer is that you are adequately covered and should keep your money.