If I Had a Million Dollars

I just learned all about life insurance—something I’ll confess I’d never given any thought to before. Every time Dr. Fiancé tries to bring up the topic—approximately once a week since I got pregnant—I end up shedding tears, partly because I don’t like to think about him dying and leaving me and the baby alone (even with a million or two dollars, which, when you come down to it, doesn’t go all that far anymore) and partly because it’s all so mind-numbingly convoluted and boring.

I keep trying to tell Dr. Fiancé that if he were to die in the next five or ten years, I’d have far bigger problems than having enough money to maintain the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed—namely I’ll have to figure out how to get myself out of the deep well of depression I’ll certainly plummet into and how to eventually resume dating. . . It would be too weird to meet two husbands on Match.com, right? But where else will anyone be meeting anyone in five or ten years?

Dr. Fiancé is under the impression that the right thing to do is to make sure I’d be left with enough money to pay off the house so the poor orphaned baby and I will have a place to live even though I still may not be making any money yet off my writing career—which is a nice thought (the paying off the house part, I mean), but I can’t imagine staying in the house with Dr. Fiancé, um, dead. Too many memories—and I’ve never liked the kitchen that much.

“If you died,” I told him this time around, “we’d sell the house and move in with your mother. The view from her living room is very soothing, and she could probably get me a writing gig at her magazine.”

But Dr. Fiancé wasn’t convinced. Something about 401(k)s and maximum contributions and term plans and tax brackets and a fixed rate of seven percent of something.

“Those insurance guys are good,” he said. “He pretty much convinced me to go with the plan that seems the most expensive but apparently isn’t in the end—and he sounded really, really smart.”

I suggested Dr. Fiancé could maybe call his dad for advice—dads are often good at that sort of thing—but he said his dad doesn’t believe in insurance. He grinned, adding, “He thinks insurance guys are total skeezeballs.”

Gee. I wonder why.