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| Time to review your life insurance? |
| Life insurance is something you buy and then don’t think about until you need it, so it’s easy to forget. But as you near retirement, it may be a good time to reevaluate your needs. Is your old policy, which may have been purchased decades ago, still meeting your needs?
Life insurance is important as we start our adult lives. We get jobs, marry, buy homes, have children. And we want to maintain that lifestyle for our loved ones should we experience an accident or illness. But then life goes on. Our children grow up. We pay off our mortgages. We retire. We live happily, thanks to our retirement savings and Social Security. At the same time, we may have a life insurance policy purchased years ago that we’re still paying premiums on. What should we do? Do we maintain the status quo and keep the policy? Or do we stop paying premiums and let the policy lapse? It’s a good question. After all, the money you pay in premiums could be used in a number of other ways. You could use it to pay down debt, add to your nest egg (investing in a manner that will hopefully grow over time) or even buy long-term care insurance. But the life insurance policy may still benefit you. Just because you have no children living at home doesn’t mean you don’t need life insurance. The people in your life could be affected by your death in many ways. How would your life insurance proceeds help them? If you can come up with enough ways, it might be worth keeping your policy in effect and reevaluate in another one to five years. We can help you decide if a life insurance policy still makes sense for you. Please reach out to us if you have any concerns or questions. |
| Restoring Biodiversity: Tiny Forests Have Mighty Impact |
| When it comes to boosting biodiversity and creating green spaces, the West has taken inspiration from the East. Utilizing the methods of one of Japan’s most respected botanists, organizations in Europe are creating tiny forests that thrive amidst urban landscapes.
Holland’s Tiny Forest Initiative and Urban Forests, based in France and Belgium, have taken a sustainable leaf out of Akira Miyawaki’s book to create small but mighty woodlands in their local areas. In 1970, Miyawaki discovered that the trees around his homeland’s religious shrines tended to be native species, but he later found that only 0.06 percent of Japanese forests were made up of indigenous trees. In response, he pioneered a method of restoring native forests on deforested or degraded plots of land. The Miyawaki Method created more than 1,700 forests throughout Asia, a staggering 96.7 percent of which developed resilient ecosystems in less than 10 years. The method serves as a blueprint for volunteers in Europe, who plant clusters of indigenous seedlings that grow to become fully fledged and biodiverse ecosystems. Even in areas as small as a tennis court, these tiny forests restore soil, preserve water and air quality and attract flora and fauna. Since these small green spaces grow 10 times faster and are 30 times denser and 100 times more biodiverse than a conventional plantation, they are a sustainable way to combat climate change, foot by foot. The small-scale patches of greenery aren’t just pleasant spots for insects and small mammals but for people, too, often serving as meeting places for local communities. |
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