When Elena got cold-called with an offer of life insurance about 10 years ago, signing up was a no-brainer.
"I took that up because we'd just had our first child," the Aucklander, then renting a small flat in central Auckland with her partner, told Newshub.
"Then when we bought a house I thought we should upgrade the policy so the mortgage would be covered, should something happen."
Elena is close to being in the minority however. A Massey University study in 2013 found barely a third of young couples, prior to having children, bother to get life insurance.
"They know they should, but it's $30 a month and they'd rather buy something else," says Pinnacle Life marketing manager Kerry Vaughan.
"You don't get anything for it - it's the ultimate grudge purchase. You don't get a T-shirt or a lovely watch or a nice shiny toy - you just get peace of mind, which is very hard to quantify."
Otago couple Darren and Tasha bought their first property last year, but neither have got life insurance. Darren told Newshub he knows it's "irrational".
"Our family would be financially screwed if I'm the first to go in the very near future."
Ex-Hamiltonian Gian, now living in San Francisco where buying even a one-bedroom apartments remain a dream for most, didn't get life insurance until his US mployer there offered him a basic package. Life insurance is rarely offered by New Zealand employers.
"I decided to get more to make sure my husband is taken care of. I'm the primary earner so my husband didn’t do a policy."
Ms Vaughan says this is a common mistake couples make. If the uninsured partner dies, the surviving half may find it difficult to maintain their income and lifestyle.
"You might need to take some time off to look after the children, you might not be able to work as much as you had been, you might have to move or downsize."
Luckily, we live in 2018 and getting life insurance is no longer the ordeal it once was - much of that thanks to Pinnacle Life, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary of making insurance "simple, easy, quick, and great value".
"The only way you could buy life insurance was through a broker," says Ms Vaughan. "Some guy would come and sit at your kitchen table and ask lots of questions... then you'd end up with a product you probably didn't really understand."
Pinnacle Life began by offering life insurance over the phone, without a broker - some of whom are paid two years' worth of premiums in commission. Twenty years later we've ditched the landlines for smartphones and 56k modems for ultra-fast broadband, and it's hard to imagine there's any other way of buying insurance - yet some life insurance providers persevere with brokers.
"Seventy-five percent of people who come to our website get through in 10 minutes and are instantly covered," says Ms Vaughan. "No one else in New Zealand offers that."
With her third child on the way, Elena's decided to the sensible thing and up the amount she's covered for.
"If something happened to me, I wouldn't want my family left in a financial hole."
This article was created for Pinnacle Life.
