Trekkychick

Dear Reader,

As you can imagine, there are many perks to owning your own home, but none so sweet as the flood of letters you will receive from the bank managing your home loan regarding the importance of purchasing mortgage life insurance in case you perish prior to enjoying the home you just procured.

I laughed off the first thirteen postal recommendations of life insurance, considering them among the likes of the welcome wagon offerings standard to new residents of an established neighborhood community, like the nearby Home Depot’s “welcome to your new home” 25% coupon that arrived. But as these one-way correspondences became increasingly hostile, from the benign, “Perhaps you would like to consider life insurance, even though you are young, healthy, and vital,” to the mildly more provoking “It sure would be nice if your loved ones were taken care of in the case of your accidental dismemberment or death,” to the unquestionably threatening, “You’re living on a fault line that will divide in less than 24 hours, and you will be immediately plunged into the depths of the earth, and you WILL NOT make it out alive. Act now for your free life insurance quote,” I began to experience a disquiet regarding the health and safety of my person. So I did what any calm, rational adult would do and phoned a friend; my last lifeline before Northeast Portland’s apparently inevitable and imminent first hurricane/volcano/9.0 magnitude earthquake was to strike.

Me: Minnesota Life is very insistent that I should obtain life insurance. They are predicting my death and they seem very sure of it.

Friend: You have no dependents. There’s no reason for you to get life insurance.

Me: But what’s going to happen in the instance of my death and dismemberment tomorrow?

Friend: You’re being crazy and paranoid, again.

And while “crazy” and “paranoid” may sound like harsh [yet accurate] adjectives to use to describe me, I was deterred from my panic sufficiently to shred all fourteen life insurance mailings.

And so I went on with my fault-line-free lifestyle until today, when another poignant depiction of my impending expiration date arrived in the mail. While I meant to discard it after a brief overview, I was struck by the monthly cost assessment increases based on age. I remember back in the day, precisely five years ago, when I was in the under 25 age bracket, and life insurance was practically free even in the event that you lived directly over a fault line. And I also remember back in the day, today to be precise, when I was 29 and I could still receive reasonably priced life insurance. But in three months, when I hit the Voldemort age (The Age Which Must Not Be Named), the cost will have increased by 50% from the under-25 bracket. 50%!!!

So I did some research and I’m here to inform my one reader (Hi, Josh) that this stratospheric price increase is not only unjust, it is also inaccurate. The number one leading cause of death in the United States is in fact heart disease, which I assume stems from a broken heart, which we all know happens to young people under the age of 25 whose lover leaves them for somebody else. As people get older, the duration of their marriage is inversely proportional to their level of attractiveness (duration of marriage increases while attractiveness decreases), meaning that they are comfortable in their relationship and also ugly, and thus much less likely to leave or be left, thereby ensuring a drop in the number of broken hearts and concomitant heart disease.

Moreover, another leading cause of death, accidents, once again greatly decreases as one gets older. Young people love being reckless; partaking in such perilous activities as driving too fast, sky diving, exercising, walking in a non-crosswalk zone, eating before swimming, talking with their mouths full, staying up past their bedtime, and having sex. And I don’t need to tell you that these activities carry a high inherent risk of both death and dismemberment. Old people, on the other hand, stick to safe and gentle activities that include sitting, sitting and reading the paper, sitting and drinking coffee, and sitting while driving to the gerontologist. These activities are safe, doctor-recommended, and carry virtually no risk of death or dismemberment.

Therefore, my calculations clearly indicate that the risk of death actually decreases with age, and therefore so should the cost of life insurance.

But until then, Readers, please remember to use the crosswalk, and you will surely live a long, happy, and death-free life without the need for mortgage life insurance.

–Troi out