Does Bill Gates Have Life Insurance?

I was thinking about money this morning.

The motivation was an article in the local paper about people in financial trouble who are losing their homes. The lead was a woman who'd bought a home with her boyfriend when she was eight months pregnant. She spent time to paint the child's bedroom - nothing lavish, but blue paint on the walls, white dotted to suggest clouds, stick-on stars on the ceiling. She wanted it to be perfect. This month, she had to leave it when she discovered that her boyfriend, who'd moved out, had not been paying the mortgage, and she was in arrears to the tune of $4,500. There was no way she could pay that, and so she had to move out. The article had a picture of the now three-year-old girl coming out of the house with her mother behind her. The girl was carefully carrying her piggybank.

Oh, dammit, I wanted to write her a check on the spot.

No one ever admits being asleep or wealthy, I've heard, and so it will come as no surprise when I say that we're not wealthy. If we gave someone that amount of money, with a hope but perhaps not an expectation of getting it back, we'd notice it. And yet, I thought about it. Like other things, the thought passed. Too bad, I thought. Sorry that happened. Wish I could help. Followed quietly by the thoughts about of course, I'd never see that money again. And they might decide I was a soft touch, and come back for more. Who needs that? Note that I don't know that that would happen -- I just didn't want to even contemplate taking the chance. This is our money, after all. We worked for it, and we're planning to retire on it. We can't be taking chances with it. And anyway, she's already out of the house, it wouldn't do her any good.

All of which is true. None of which helps me when I think about it. I don't like feeling cheap, or cold, or callous. Thinking about why I can't, won't take the chance to give the money gives me all of those feelings. I may believe that we really do need to keep that money for ourselves, and be right in so thinking, but I know that if that was my family that needed money, I'd give it to them. I'd be anxious about it, but I'd do it. Years ago, my cousin needed some amount -- $1500, I think -- and asked if I would lend it to her. She was scrupulous about paying me back, and when it was done asked me for something written that said she'd done so. Why did she need that note? I don't know, but I have a suspicion that she wasn't comfortable with the idea of asking for help, and she wasn't entirely sure that I would not later say that she still owed me money. I wondered if she saw me -- with the nice house in a pleasant area -- as wealthy. She lived in a small rented house, and after her divorce moved to a small apartment. Compared to her, I was wealthy -- and like a fair number of wealthy people, I am reluctant to give any of it up. If that means that people who are decent people can't do something minor -- minor to me, but financially impossible to them -- well, gosh, sorry. That's just the way it is.

I don't particularly like thinking of myself that way.

We picked up the mail this morning (it had come yesterday, but we didn't get it). One of the missives was an offer to buy insurance against 'costly car repairs'. Gee, I said to my wife, why would you want that? Certainly, we've had surprises at the car repair place, things that stunned us, but they didn't send us into a nosedive, they were just oh, man, that's a big hit. We can live with it. And then it hit me: not everyone can. There are people -- and not people living in ramshackle houses, but people that I might actually know, people that I might actually be related to -- who would be staggered by a surprise auto repair bill. People who would have to do some major financial rejiggering to make it happen. People I know? Damn.

It brought me back to thinking about people, and money. How there are people who can't meet what I'd consider to be routine obligations, because things have gone wrong for them. I think well, that's why you have insurance, but some, maybe most of them, can't even afford that. There's have enough, and there's broke. Nothing in-between. Insurance is for those who might need quick relief but don't routinely have it. (Which, incidentally, lets Gates out, I suspect.) Others? You're on your own.

Which brings me to the topic of microfinancing. What if, I thought, I could take an amount of money that we could afford -- say, $500 -- and lend it to someone who needed it, with a fair but not bulletproof expectation of getting it back? Should I do that? How do you find these people? I know that there are web sites that say they facilitate it, but how do you know if they're real or some Russian scammer? Can you trust anyone you don't actually know?

I don't know the answer to that. But somehow, I think, I need to keep that image of the little girl and the piggybank in my mind. Because maybe we can do more than we are. Maybe we should.