Understand that there is really no need for life insurance should you not have dependants, can I get your thoughts about how to look at it from the perspective of:
1) you may not have dependants now but will likely have eventually
2) as you age premium increase, the likelihood of exclusions might also happen
how do you balance this competing “issues”?
I’d look at two basic, common scenarios:
1. Parent as dependent. In this scenario you probably know already whether the parent is going to come up short and won’t be self-supporting in his/her retirement. So you’d probably go right ahead and buy some term life insurance (and as always DII). This might be term to age 55 or 60 depending on your relative ages. And/or CPF Retirement Account top ups (to the parent’s CPF) work great since that feeds into the parent’s CPF LIFE income stream.
2. Future child as dependent. In this scenario you get to decide whether to create this dependency, and with whom. One perfectly viable choice is not to create the dependency if you think you (as a couple) cannot adequately defend the child’s lifestyle.
This doesn’t leave a lot of room for “I’m insurable now, will be uninsurable in the future, still going to create a dependency, still capable of creating a dependency, and I/we cannot self-insure.” The background context here is that Singapore’s TFR is the lowest in the world or darn close to it. Not bringing children (or more children) into the world is a very popular choice here.
Even if you think you’ll thread that needle you then ought to balance that narrow risk against other risks. Insurance that isn’t needed now isn’t free, and that spending inhibits useful cashflow and wealth accumulation. That’s a class of risks, too.
I tend to discount spouses as dependents these days, generally speaking. Dual income households are thoroughly common in Singapore, and a couple with a decent savings rate (and singles with decent savings rates before becoming a couple) can generally amass reasonable wealth to keep a surviving spouse from starving. Including CPF nominations. It’s the children who are financially tougher in these terms. Mileage may vary of course, but when I met my (then future) wife she would’ve been financially fine if I dropped dead the day after I met her. She was already nobody’s dependent, and what a party she would’ve had inheriting from me in that hypothetical. Here too we should “mark to market” what’s happening in Singapore: couples are coupling later than they did in prior generations. And both women and men are pursuing working careers and succeeding.
Finally, get DII when you start working. (Unless you can self-insure, and very few people can.) I’m going to keep beating that drum. THAT you should worry about.
Anyway, long answer, but overall I don’t worry much about life insurability. It’s an argument, but I don’t think it’s a strong one.
