The best Valentine’s Day gift idea

When people think about February, they tend to think first about Valentine’s Day.

This is much to the delight of Hallmark, Victoria’s Secret, florists, restaurateurs, jewelers and chocolatiers everywhere, who all do banner business because of this holiday.

It’s too bad that life insurers don’t experience a similar bump in business, despite the best efforts of the LIFE Foundation’s “Insure Your Love” campaign. I thought it was hilarious when they had a big guy dressed as Cupid asking man-on-the-street questions in Venice Beach about love and life insurance a couple of years ago.

But the big guy brought up a great point, and made the relatively few people he spoke with on camera think about something they probably never considered before: Life insurance can be used as a gift to show someone you love them.

No, it’s not very romantic on the surface, and presenting your spouse with a life insurance policy on Valentine’s Day when she may be expecting roses may not lead to the kind of evening you had hoped for. But when you really think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. What better way, really, to show someone you love them than by making sure they would not suffer financially in the event you were to die prematurely? In the big picture, flowers pale by comparison.

Does the average person realize how important it is for widows and widowers to be covered financially in such a circumstance? No, because they never think about it. But if they did, they would realize just what a good gift idea this is for those who have not already taken care of their life insurance needs. And we all know there are way too many people out there that aren’t covered, and would, perhaps unwittingly, put their loved ones in terrible financial difficulty if they were to die.

It’s the basic problem of out of sight, out of mind. We know the average person isn’t getting contacted by an agent to inquire about their life insurance needs around Valentine’s Day or any other day, for that matter. Sure, they may occasionally hear the Peanuts characters saying that term life insurance ought to cost 5 cents during a MetLife commercial, and might be further tempted to look into a term life quote after finding out how little a term life policy actually might cost from an online quote provider’s radio or Internet ad.

I do believe these types of ad campaigns are helpful in raising a little public awareness about how affordable life insurance can be, especially as studies have shown that consumers overestimate the cost of life insurance by a significant margin. But for the most part, life insurance continues to fly far under the radar of public consciousness.