"I should have bought that term plan when I had the chance…"

Salil Sharma missed the opportunity of a lifetime when he gave up the chance to buy a term plan. He regrets this mistake in his senior years.

Making all his family’s dreams come true has been Salil Sharma’s* activity of choice. The Mumbai-based businessman had a tough childhood, so he was determined to provide his own family with every material comfort possible. “There were days in my own childhood when we often went to bed hungry. My father was a cobbler and money was always scarce. He somehow scraped together the money to send us to school, but we started working very early in life.”

When Salil came to Mumbai in search of a job, he was determined to turn his fortunes around. “I had realised how important financial security is…how a full stomach can give you the courage to go out in the world and work hard. By the time I got married, I had already begun to save money. In my 30s, I started a small business in garments.” Today, Salil owns two factories in Gujarat and has a store in Mumbai.

But despite his riches, he has one abiding regret. “A few years ago, my cousin told me he was buying a term insurance plan,” Salil explains. “I asked him about its benefits, and when he told me that there was only a death benefit in it, I told him he was making a mistake buying a term insurance policy. I reasoned that if one was making premium payments anyway, there should be a maturity benefit to the policy. But my cousin was adamant about buying it. He said that for a salaried person like him, ensuring his family’s security with the term plan corpus was most important.”

Salil lost his cousin last year, but instead of the death plunging his family into chaos – his family was dependent on the cousin’s income – the term plan saved the day. “The family filed the insurance claim and the corpus was a handsome one. The money will pay for his children’s education and also help his wife in her old age,” Salil says. “I mused on his wisdom in taking the term plan: with one simple step, he had eliminated any financial uncertainty his family could have faced. Today, they are comfortably living off the term plan corpus without having to depend on any of us.”

Looking back at his own life – he is now 65 years old and too old to buy a term plan – Salil realises his folly. “I had a life insurance plan that matured five years ago. I have set that money aside for my wife. But with each passing day, I feel the need to wind up my business and just relax – but I cannot. My son wishes to go abroad for studies and I want to give my daughter a lavish wedding. So I must keep working and amass a lot of money so that I can settle both of them, create a retirement fund for my wife and also pay off some debts.”

He signs off wistfully, “If only I had taken a term insurance plan, I could have taken it a bit easier at this stage of my life. It would have helped my family if something were to happen to me…”