When looking at your financial life it is important to build an island of protection.   You can never completely insulate yourself from all risk, but you can take certain steps to protect your families future.  You need to have all the basics in insurance with homeowners (if you own a home), car insurance, health insurance, and life insurance.  On top of that there may be various trust work and planning that you can do with your lawyer and CPA that can help to further protect you.

One thing we suggest to our clients is to buy an overall umbrella liability policy.  Usually for a few hundred dollars a year you can get an umbrella policy for several million dollars.   With homeowners, car, and health insurance you want to make sure you have plans that meet your needs and have deductibles at a reasonable level.  For example, if you can swallow a slightly higher deductible, then that can usually drop your premiums.   You have to obviously meet the deductible amount if you have a claim though.  When looking at Life insurance, you want to make sure you protect your income for your family.    Also, if your spouse works  it is probably important to protect their income.    Life insurance isn’t just about straight financial loss as you may not emotionally be able to go on for a while.   Do you have enough insurance if you didn’t want to go back to your job right away or even for two years?

Besides protecting yourself and your family it is important to protect your assets from creditors.   It is important to speak to your CPA, Lawyer, and financial professionals to make sure you have taken the proper steps on this front.   Understanding how to set up your assets and what vehicles to use will be important to determine.