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Despite its many attractions and wonderful people, South Africa is a highly complex country to country to live in and there a range of factors that impact on both our daily lives and financial planning. The older (and slower and fatter) we get the more attention we have to pay to things such as wills, mortgages, school fees, and of course, insurance. None of us want to see something awful happening to our loved ones because we have failed to make adequate insurance arrangements and are then struck by what will be just another tragic event requiring insurance in South Africa. In South Africa, the variables of crime, a completely inadequate public health infrastructure, and the economy, mean that we have no choice but to spend what often seems like an awful lot of money on insurance to take of our families, no matter how much we might resent this expenditure.

The possibility of our homes being burgled or our cars stolen or damaged is fairly high in South Africa and we all know that we need to protect ourselves again any possible losses in order to limit the economic damage we will suffer should it ever actually happen. The problem is that when we take out insurance for our homes not all of us know how to adequately insure our possessions often end up under insured. Of course you may never even realise this until the day you come home to a burgled home and start making lists of everything that is missing. Then you contact your insurance company, and there are many good and not so good ones in South Africa, and they tell you how much they will compensate you and it doesn’t even come close to the value of what you have lost. To avoid this you simply must update your household inventory list on a regular basis as many things lose value over time.

It is highly unfortunate that with insurance in South Africa you have no guarantee that you will be able to get adequate health care unless you have the money or the insurance to pay ofr it. The current nationwide strike in the public health sector exemplifies this weakness in the South African system perfectly. People are literally dying on a daily basis because they cannot afford to access private health care. We all know that the only way to protect our families from the ravages of public health care in South Africa is to make sure we have the best medical insurance possible. To do this you will have to shop around and be prepared to exercise your consumer rights and work out the best possible deal by comparing services and price structures. It is possible to get more insurance for your money if you approach it like any other business transaction.

With the economy still reeling and unemployment growing, many people face the scary prospect of not being able to pay their insurance premiums. If you don’t pay your premium it will lapse and then you will really be in a mess if anything goes wrong. Many people in South make the mistake of thinking that insurance is a nice to have luxury and their insurance policies are the first things to go when they hit a rough patch. This is a serious mistake, as your insurance may the one thing that saves you when the unexpected happens.

Instead of complaining about how bad things are in South Africa it is critical to focus on dealing with the realities instead. Part of this process will mean re-evaluating your entire approach to insurance and examining all the fine print on your existing contracts.

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