I don't know who needs to hear this but you need to get insurance if you have assets that are your source of income and it can be insurable. This may not mean much to a lot of folks in developed countries because they're familiar with it, but a lot (and I mean a lot) of people in underdeveloped countries don't care about insurance.
I've read stories of people who were okay financially going broke because they have spent all they had to treat an illness for themselves, their children, or loved ones. I'm not saying insurance is our personal lord and savior, but it can help you in tight situations.
Around November last year, I volunteered to join a local and small NGO that was taking food, drugs, and other supplies to flood victims.
For context of how big the flood was, we used speedboats on roads and it was as though we were on a high sea.
Experts gave lectures on how to prepare for a flood and not wait for it to be too late. Some of the people we met told their stories.
We met one woman whose case I found very interesting.
She had a farm; a fishery and a poultry farm. The poultry was much bigger than the fishery. The farm was so big and established it made her thousands of dollars monthly in gross income. The flood took her by surprise, she was able to rescue some feeds and animals, but she lost so much of it.
Now let's ignore the fact that she was careless for not believing the warnings that a very big flood was coming because, in her words "In my 56 years of being alive and my 17+ years of doing this business, I've never experienced the tiniest bit of flood"
Let's focus on the fact that neither her farm nor a single thing on the farm was insured despite generating that kind of income.
Because of the damage we saw, the NGO started a campaign for the government to help these farmers with grants and loans so they can get back on their feet (but y'all know how politics gets). This allowed us to visit this woman at her farm. She's back on her feet, but it could take years to get back to what she was before the flood.
If her farm was insured, it most likely wouldn't have taken her that long.
There are many more people like this. A cab driver loses his care and he's back to square one because that's his source of income. Others get an illness that is expensive to treat and they go broke trying to pay for the treatment.
A husband and father die unexpectedly and leave nothing behind, leaving the wife to struggle alone to take care of the children. This takes a family that was comfortably a middle-class family to a lower-class family.
If you make money, get health insurance for you and your family, and insure your assets that are a source of income, businesses. Get a life insurance to secure your family's future.
There's a saying " hope for the best and plan for the worst".
It's not only good advice, sometimes it is downright mandatory and written into contracts. Like if you take out a mortgage or a large business loan, you will often be required to insure it against catastrophic loss, because the bank also wants to be sure that the asset they are funding will be covered in the worst case scenario. It can be tricky when you get into more tailored insurance, like income insurance, when determining whether it is the right choose. Most people will go through their 20's without any need for things like that, as the amount they are earning can often be low, however once you get into your 30's and beyond there are lots of dangers out there like redundancy or health risks, which get more important to protect against financially.