Okay, I’ll admit, I don’t have life or disability insurance.

Somehow, I seem to be okay with it. I know, however, that as an adult, it’s one of those things that I need to take care of.

The thing is, my husband and I have no children. I am also not the main breadwinner in our relationship so I feel like I don’t really need it. The general rule of thumb seems to be that if you have dependents, you need to get life insurance. Nobody really depends on my income except for myself.

My husband’s income is enough to cover our daily expenses and then some. I really don’t need to work because he can cover me under his own insurance plan. However, I choose to work because I want to earn my own money. I don’t want to be completely dependent on my husband’s paycheck only.

However, if my income disappears, we really have no need to worry. Most of the expenses I have are related to earning that income. My paycheck is usually saved. I pay my own national health insurance, national pension scheme (like the US Social Security), and whatever transportation and work costs I need. If I don’t earn an income, all of the insurances I need will be covered under my husband’s plan.

The only thing I worry about is that my husband is not completely healthy. The main reason why I started this blog was to document our financial picture precisely because hubby became ill and I needed to step up.

Recently, my husband has gotten a lot better, but I know that his disease is not one hundred percent cured.

This leads me to wonder whether I should get insurance for myself.

The purpose of getting life insurance on myself would be to give my husband an extra layer of protection in case I died. I can probably afford a small policy to leave for my husband. Naturally, upon my death I will also leave a lot of my accounts to him. That’s the easy part.

Now, if I am still alive but become incapacitated and won’t be able to work, what happens then? In this sense, even though my husband is not dependent on my income, he is completely dependent on my physically being able to do things to help him out, mostly emotional and mental support. If I become incapacitated somehow, I probably won’t be able to support him. He probably also has to do a lot more to help me out instead. This is the more worrisome part of our life–hence the conundrum. Should I get disability insurance for myself?

To be honest, I lack the knowledge of getting insurance. I have been putting off setting up an appointment with a financial planner to talk about this particular issue. Most of the time, too, I think that my regular pension insurance does cover my medical costs just in case I fall into disability–like social security disability benefits. It won’t be much, but at least it’s there.

Insurance is also something that I just don’t fully grasp. I feel like I need to understand it more thoroughly before I jump into the whole thing, especially since I live in Japan. Most of the information is provided in Japanese, and I still have not seen any English websites that cover the topic comprehensively. (When I have the time, I will do a complete write up of the topic. Right now, I am just trying to organize my thoughts around the whole issue.)

In reality, though, I know that I really should just jump right in. I don’t need to keep reading up on it. If not that, at least I should go talk to people who really know about the topic.

Argh.