Football's life lessons

Last week, my fantasy football team racked up the second highest score in my league. Too bad I was paired against the team with the highest score.

On Sunday, I sat in Mile High Stadium and watched my beloved Denver Broncos rally in the fourth quarter for an almost-comeback … and then still lose.

It’s no wonder, then, that football season often makes me recall that old idiom: “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” Your team almost won, you say? Yeah, okay. That still means they lost.

Of course, I’d love it if football season reminded me instead of that (also really old) phrase, “The Denver Broncos are Super Bowl champions.” But I suppose the horseshoes/hand grenades thing isn’t a bad lesson to recall this — or any — time of year, especially when it comes to life insurance.

Because, let’s face it, life insurance, at its most basic level, is pretty cut and dry. You either have it or you don’t. You own enough or you don’t. Your family is adequately protected or it isn’t. Simple enough, right?

Yet, we hear all the time about the dangerous number of Americans going without, or without enough, life insurance these days. LIMRA’s 2010 “Trends in Life Insurance Ownership” study found that only 44% of U.S. households have individual life insurance coverage. It also found that 95 million Americans had no coverage whatsoever in 2010. Several studies have found one of the top reasons people don’t buy life insurance — or don’t have enough of it — is because they’re confused about how much they need.

Why don’t they know? Here’s a clue: that LIMRA study also found 8 out of 10 households have no personal life insurance agent. Yikes. That’s like throwing your offense out on the field without a quarterback. (Yes, that means you, the producer, are the quarterback. Don’t get all cocky about it.)