Part 2: The Surrender

Not long after coming to my senses and realizing that whole life insurance was a massive scam, the question was what to do about it. Initially I met with my financial advisor and requested to surrender the policy, but predictably that didn't go very smoothly. She tried every trick in the book to get me to reconsider.

When it became pretty clear that I wasn't going to budge, she reluctantly got out the forms and said, "Well you know you're breaking the contract. This is probably the worst time to sell, as the markets are down." I had counted on a loss of at least $20k. During the meeting I said some things I probably shouldn't, which most likely led to a long and convoluted series of delays on the actual surrender process.

Meanwhile, a bike ride was needed to clear my brain out from this stress. The weather was amazing so the opportunity had to be taken advantage of. I wasn't sure where to ride, just anywhere really. I picked a random direction and happened to go straight into a headwind.

This kept up for about 25km before I got sick of it, found a Starbucks, and sat down to take in what I recently learned with my budgeting skills.

Not long after that I got a phone call where my friend asked me to do a presentation on these financial skills to other expats. I was astonished they would ask me, after all I was just learning this stuff. But I agreed.

Back to the budget. For the last several months I had stopped contributing to that life insurance. The biggest challenge was trying to figure out what to do with all the extra cash I had suddenly found myself with. It was much better than a windfall to be honest. There was nothing left for me in the will anyway, but I had made my peace with that. Besides, I would rather trade an inheritance for learning skills to take control of my own cash. And that was certainly happening.

While trying to figure out what to do next, I ran through the list of things that had already been done:

Build up a local emergency fund. Check
Get rid of all debt payments. Check
Build up a 6-month repatration emergency fund. Check
Begin the process to dump the life insurance. Check

At this point I knew I had to start wealth building, and start again properly. There would be no immediate rush, there would only be well thought out plans and more research.

It was then time to turn the bike around and get a much-needed massage after all the stress this insurance fiasco had caused me. I was barely able to sleep all night for several nights in a row once realizing the breakthrough and taking action on it.

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,905 km (1,183 miles)

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