The True Value of Life

Today’s most popular media advertisement talks about life and how much it is worth. Taglines like “Life’s full of surprises”, and “Live your life to the fullest!” are sure ways to catch people’s attention.  But why do these taglines spark people’s interest? It is because most of us believe that life is priceless, and that no amount of whatsoever can ever compensate to the value of a human soul.

This belief, though, is never accepted by those who are into insurance. Ask your insurance agent or adviser how much your life costs and they will tell you, “You are worth a hundred thousand dollars.” “What? I’m only worth a hundred thousand dollars?!”

Well, this may be highly unbelievable to you, but for your insurance agents, it is a reality. These guys have a monetary value to human life, which they call Human Life Value or HLV. Using the HLV, insurance agents compute the economic value of a certain person. Different values: social, emotional, and spiritual, are taken into account in the said computation. So how much exactly is your life worth?

What is HLV?

Human beings, due to their capacity to generate income, are considered as assets just like any ordinary assets (commodities, real estate, etc.). If any of your assets are for sale, then the face value is determined by many factors, such as the actual cost of the asset, its salvage value, and possible generation of income. And just like any other assets, human value will be determined by those factors, too.

Calculating One’s HLV

Most people, when ask about how protected their families are in terms of financial resources by the time they breathe their last, would immediately say that they have already applied for certain life insurance policies, and have had everything covered for them by the time of their death. However, this is not entirely true.  No matter how many life insurance policies you have applied for, the total coverage would still be insufficient since these insurances only cover a small amount. To know how much you really cost, you can do the simple calculation below:
your average lifetime income, less the taxes, less other expenditure that would come from your lifestyle and consumption; then, add your possible benefits that would come from your employer and insurance coverage. The result would be your Human Life Value (HLV).

Conclusion

Even though it is a little bit odd for people to put price tags or monetary values on their lives, it is basically a technique for people to know how much life insurance they should buy. If ever a person insists that his/her value is priceless, then that person needs to buy a priceless life insurance, too. Such an insurance policy is really far from reality. So, a very good suggestion is to put a price tag in our respective lives by calculating our individual HLV, and use the result of the said computation in deciding for which insurance policy to purchase. This life insurance is not only for you, but for your love ones, too.