My Career as a Financial Planner

The back of our house in Torbay

My Insurance History

My own experience of insurance started in 1977 when Chris and I bought our first home in Torbay. We paid $45,000 for it and had a mortgage - of course. We were offered mortgage life insurance and took it. We paid off this first mortage in 7 years. Looking back I realise that we paid a level amount of insurance on a debt that was supposed to take 25 years to pay off, so we paid far too much.

In 1978 Patty Tramley, who had taught me to weave, was diagnosed with Multiple Schlerosis. She was in a wheelchair within a year but lived for 25 years. As she had been working at Memorial University when she became ill, she had disability insurance. This allowed her to keep her home. Four of us who worked as artists and craftspeople decided to find out more about buying disability insurance ourselves. We all purchased association coverage through the Canadian Crafts Council. I moved to a personal plan a few years later when the premiums increased on the Association plan. Since then two of us have made claims, the web mistress Donna fell off a roof and broke her wrist and was off work for about 6 months and the other was on disability for about 10 years because of fibromyalgia.

Patty, Baby Clair
and new mom Susan

“On Ne Sait Jamais”
on a windy day reefed

When we moved to our home in St. John's we were again offered mortgage life insurance. I was shocked at the cost and found out that buying personal life insurance for each of us was much less expensive.

By the time we moved to Nanaimo we had about $300,000 of life insurance on three policies each. An insurance broker here showed us that if we bought one policy each that we could have $500,000 of coverage for the same price. So we changed.

That same broker helped us buy disability insurance for Chris as he was self-employed for the first time in his life. Since he has a PhD and was an office-based consultant, the insurance companies saw him as low risk. However, a few years later he started an aquaculture business where he was in small boats and on rafts. He did not have to pay more, even though if he had applied after starting that business the cost would have been about double. Also he decided to buy the insurance with a return of premium option. It increased the monthly cost by 50% but after 10 years he would get back most of the money he had paid in. At the time I was annoyed, in January 2004, when we received $23,000 I was elated!!

Our boys sailing their Opti