Life Insurance and Cash Buffers

This post follows up on EnoughWealth's comments on my previous post on Ramit's Conscious Spending Plan. In that post, I commented that I should have more cash in our offset account, in case I die or something, as otherwise bills might start to bounce (like the bill for tuition for the term for two children... or an AUD 25k capital call from Aura), especially once my salary was stopped. Even though I now have my salary coming into our offset account I am finding I have to shuffle money around quite frequently to able to pay the bills. This is because investments like in Unpopular Ventures are also coming out of this account. We are earning the mortgage rate implicitly on money in the offset account. But as that is less than our top margin rate that we are paying I have been reluctant to just put a lump of tens of thousands in the offset account.

EnoughWealth said that that is the purpose of life insurance. Yes, we both have life insurance attached to our employer superannuation. But getting life insurance paid out could take weeks. Only in 50% of cases is it within 2 weeks. My death cover is AUD 168k. This number seems to be falling as I get older.

So, probably I should hold more cash in our offset account despite the interest cost. I also need to write an "operating manual" and get Moominmama who has no interest in finances to read it... 

I recently learned that I have an above average probability of getting a heart attack for my age (59). I am taking statins now to try to reduce that rate, but who knows how effective that will be.