| Life insurance is a safeguard
for your family in the unfortunate case that you pass
away. It can help them pay for funeral expenses, loans
and other costs. Life insurance
did not always exist however. It has a long history
of development to where it is today.
The first notion of life
insurance first began over five thousand years ago
in Ancient China and Babylonia. Ancient people wanted
to protect against loss. They developed insurance
systems that protected investments behind trade
efforts, particularly in respect to goods being shipped
across the seas. After the first insurance policies
were outlined in an attempt to aid commerce the idea
of life insurance took shape in ancient Rome.
Ancient Romans believed that anyone who was wrongly
buried would become an unhappy ghost. For this reason,
they tended to invest large amounts of money in elaborate
burials. Many Romans on the lower socioeconomic level
lacked the necessary resources for a proper Roman burial.
Groups of individuals called burial clubs began to form
in which all members were required to regularly donate
to a common fund that was used in the event of a member's
death to fund his funeral. Eventually, the practice
grew to include a stipend to the survivors of the deceased.
These Roman burial clubs were the beginning of life
insurance as we now know it. A group of people enters
into a voluntary agreement to pay premiums that are
used to provide benefits to any paying member of the
group who happens to die. Basically life insurance today
still bears a remarkable similarity to the burial clubs
of ancient Rome.
Today most people are more concerned with providing
replacement income for the family of the deceased than
about funeral expenses (although they usually are a
factor). The principle that the financial
strength of many, when combined, can produce necessary
results for others in difficult times still holds true
however. Life insurance continues today because those
underlying principles remain unchanged.
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