We all want to protect our families, and one of the most fundamental ways we do that is putting a roof over their heads. There is nothing that makes us feel safer than having a home to go to.

But, if tragedy strikes, your home can be one of the first things to be taken away from you.

In this episode I talk about three ways to keep from losing your home.

Three Ways to Keep From Losing Your Home

There are three ways in this video because there are three primary ways that home ownership can come under fire:

1. Loss of job;
2. Disability;
3. Death.

Each situation requires a different type of protection. And as an estate planning attorney I’d be failing if I didn’t tell you about all three of them, even though none of them really has a lot to do with my role in your life (other than to make sure you and your family are fully protected).

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. Do you have kids? Have you completed guardianship paperwork? Have you done it correctly? Click here to find out what happens if you don’t do anything: Are you okay with a judge choosing the guardians of your children?

P.P.S. Do you own a business? Do you have a plan so the business, and your family, can survive if something happens to you? If not, click here to learn how simple it is to protect your business and your family from tragedy: 5 Ways to Protect Your Business from Catastrophic Failure.

P.P.P.S. Do you have no kids and think you don’t need an estate plan? Single and think a will is only for married couples. You couldn’t be more wrong. Click here to learn more: 5 reasons estate planning is a must have even if you don’t have kids.

Christopher Small is a Kirkland estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.

#RichLifeLawyer Show 005 Transcript

Hey everybody, this is Christopher Small and this is episode five of the Rich Life Lawyer Show.

I’m here, as I always am, ready to talk to you, drop some knowledge, share some things with you so you can, you know, create wealth, protect your family, become rich, live a rich life.

Today we’re talking about three ways that you can protect your home. And you know, I own a house, and even if you rent a house, this applies. This doesn’t have to be about home ownership but I know that, you know, keeping my family safe, keeping them protected, is one of my driving goals, right? It’s one of the most important things in my life. It’s the reason why I do a lot of the stuff that I do.

So, I want to make sure they’re protected even when I can’t protect them, alright? And that’s what we’re really talking about today: how you can keep your home when you for whatever reason, for some reason, can’t pay for it anymore.

And there are three kind of ways that this happens, and we’re going to address each of those three.

The first way that this happens where you lose the ability to pay for your home, is you lose your job.

We saw a lot of this in two thousand and like seven, eight, nine, ten, right? Everybody was losing their jobs, a lot of people were struggling financially and a lot of people just didn’t have any way to pay for their homes.

A lot of people their houses to foreclosure, got kicked out, it’s terrible, right? Terrible experience.

The one way that you can avoid that, the one way you can avoid that job loss, loss of home, or that kind of career matter, you know, that career event happening, is to build up some cash reserves.

Start saving today for the next two thousand and seven because that day is going come. We have already, we have seen the past that bubbles come and go about every to ten years, and we’re actually getting probably pretty close to another one, right? In some way.

And so the way that you protect against that is just by saving money. You know, you want to have at least three to six months of living expenses just saved up in a accessible account, alright?

We call that liquid, which means you can get it easily. It’s not locked up in your home, it’s not locked up in a retirement account, where you take or get a big penalty if you take it out. It’s just in a, you know, an indexed fund account.

Could be in a simple savings account, you know, although there are ways, better ways to make money than own up to that. But essentially, start saving that money away today, start building up that cash reserve so that if you hit a rough patch, you don’t have to really stress out about it. You know, you can get there.

The second way that you can protect your home, or the second event too that lead to a need for protection, is disability. You know, you get in a car accident and you can’t work anymore or you get in a car accident and you’re in a coma for six months.

You can’t work, you’re not getting paid, how do you keep your home? How do you keep supporting your family?

Disability insurance is the way that you do that.

Now, sometimes your employer will have disability insurance for you that they will provide but typically that doesn’t get up to the level that you actually need to provide for your family. So what you need to do is supplement that disability insurance with your own disability insurance or get your own disability insurance.

That’s what I have, okay, I pay, I think I pay like, I don’t know what I paid, twenty bucks a month or twenty five dollars a month and I gets me x dollars if I’m ever disabled, per month all the way until I retire. You could do that too.

I strongly consider you do that. Go to your HR person today or your boss. If you’re in a smaller company, ask them if they have a disability insurance for you. If they do, find out what that amount is. Then go talk to somebody that can fill you up to what you, where you need to be in case that happens.

The third event that can happen where you want to protect your family and protect your home is death.

Let’s imagine that car accident doesn’t disable you, it kills you. People die all of the time for all kinds of different reasons, you know.

Sometimes it’s illness, sometimes it’s heart attack, sometimes it’s car accident, sometimes and you know maybe we don’t wanna talk about this but sometimes it’s one of those catastrophic events where someone comes in and shoots up the place, right?

I guarantee you, all of the people that have suffered that loss, man, it’s a life changing moment for your family. For yourself, obviously but that happens so we need to think about that and the way that you can protect against that, is with life insurance.

You take a life insurance policy out that at least covers the cost of your home, like your mortgage, and then maybe a year of your living it, of your wages, right? So if your home, if you have a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar mortgage on your home and you’re making a hundred thousand dollars a year, you may wanna take out a life insurance policy for at least three-fifty.

That way if you die, your family can take the two-fifty, pay off the house, they can take the hundred and live off of that for a year. You know, so they don’t, they aren’t creating a financial hardship right off the bat. You know, they can deal with your loss. They don’t have to worry about paying the bills because that can be just an added stress in the time where you really wanna focus on remembering, you know remembering the ones that you love.

So that’s it. Those are three ways that you could do that. And I would encourage you to pursue all three of them because each one covers a different sort of event.

And let’s see, question of the day is you know, tell me your favorite holiday. I’m just curious, doesn’t really have anything to do with, whether what’s going on or what we’ve talked about. I just want to know. I want to know about you, so tell me your favorite holiday and why?

I’ll catch you in the next episode. Oh remember, if you have questions, I have answers. @richlifelawyer on Twitter, Facebook.com/richlifelawyer, just use the hashtag #richlifelawyershow so that I can find them. I want to compile them and I will answer them here, alright? See ya!