Everyday Money Habits · Worksheet

The write-a-check test.

Insurance is only for the catastrophes you couldn’t write a check for — never the small stuff, and never as an investment. This sheet runs your coverage through one question, finds the gap most people miss, and names the first one to close.

Beginner

Name

Date

Audience: For anyone sorting what to insure and what to skip
Time: About 20 minutes
Materials: Your current policies or a benefits summary · a pen

Objective

Run each coverage through one question — could I write a check for this? — and find the first real gap to close.

Use this when

You’re paying for coverage you’re not sure you need, or missing coverage you do — and want a clear sort.

1 · The test that sorts any coverage

One question sorts all of it: if this happens and I’m not insured, can I write a check and move on? A $200 phone screen — yes, so you self-fund it. A $30,000 surgery — no, and that’s exactly what insurance is for. One rider: is it being sold to you as an investment or savings, not pure protection? If yes, it’s a skip — even if you couldn’t write the check.

2 · The odds you might be skipping

Per the Social Security Administration, more than 1 in 4 of today’s 20-year-olds will become disabled long enough to stop working before they retire — higher than the odds of dying young. Yet long-term disability is the coverage most people skip. The risk we insure heavily (an early death) is less likely than the one we ignore (a lost paycheck).

3 · Sort your own coverage

The coverage almost everyone needs — tick the ones you already have; an empty box is a gap:

Health insurance — the one bill that can reach six figures overnight.

Auto liability, if you drive — pays for the damage you cause to others.

Renters or homeowners — for where you live and what’s in it.

Long-term disability — replaces your paycheck if you can’t work. The boring box, and the one most likely to get used. Check whether your employer offers it first.

Depends on your situation:

Term life — you need it if someone’s life would get financially worse if you died tomorrow (a partner, a child, a co-signer stuck with your debt). If no one depends on you, you don’t — no matter how cheap the rate.
An umbrella policy — extra liability above your auto and home limits. Comes later, once you have real assets worth protecting. Not a first-job purchase.

Skip it — or at least, never as an investment:

Cash-value life insurance (whole, universal, or variable) sold as an investment. It has a couple of narrow honest uses — estate planning at very high net worth, or providing for a lifelong dependent — settled with an attorney or a fee-only advisor, not bought across a table. For nearly everyone else, term life plus investing wins.
Extended warranties, identity-theft insurance, and life insurance on a child — small stuff you can self-fund, or risks that don’t cost you a paycheck.

4 · One move, this week

The outcome is a single line: my first gap is ___. Do that one thing — check whether your employer offers long-term disability and sign up if it does, price a term policy if someone depends on you, or cancel one add-on you’re paying for and don’t need.

My first gap isthe empty box that would hurt the most

The one move I’ll makeenroll · price a policy · cancel an add-on

The date I’ll do it bymost of this takes one login or one phone call

5 · Reflection

Which coverage were you paying for that the test says you could self-fund?

Which gap surprised you most — the one you’d been skipping?

Based on the Guide to insurance.