Most people know what Arachnophobia is (if you don’t it’s the fear of spiders), but how about Coulrophobia, Trypophonia or Gamophobia?

The fear of Clowns, Holes and marriage (the three fears I mentioned above) are all to one degree or another mostly irrational.

However this doesn’t change the fact that for the individuals involved these fears feel real. I consider myself particularly rational but I still suffer from a slight phobia towards one of the three I’ve mentioned! (Let me say at this point in the blog that it isn’t marriage! I’m saying that as I’ve got a healthy amount of fear for my wife which compels me to point this out – weirdly I couldn’t find which I couldn’t find the definition for a ‘fear of spouse’!)

Fear by it’s nature is emotional and not rational. The issue with some of the decisions we make when guided by fear is that we sometimes overestimate (or underestimate) the risks involved in our day to day lives.

This can lead to us either protecting against “stuff” that’s really unlikely to happen or ignoring risks when all the evidence says we should really do something to insure against it.

Insuring against the unknown is an important consideration to make. I know that I sleep more easy at night knowing that if I’m not around I know that Cassie, Charlotte and Sophie are looked after.

Also I’d suggest that to state that emotion won’t come into play when making decisions about risks (and what to protect against) are unrealistic.

However if we can temper our emotion by understanding more about the true risks we take this allows us to make better financial decisions.

The biggest issue with understanding the risks we truly face is that doing that is more complicated than we think.

With any risk (including many we can insure against) there are a number of factors which impact the likelihood of any particular event happening.

The great news is that there is a wide range of data available for free via some brilliant resources (like for example from the Office of National Statistics) which enable us to build more of a clearer picture of the risks associated with a wide range of different aspects of our lives.

The bad news is that it takes a lot of work to understand what the numbers tell us and translate it into something meaningful and useful. It’s actually a full time job! (as any Actuary will tell you).

However I’m hoping to change that!

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be focussing on sharing some clear information on this Blog in order to provide you with a more informed view of some of the risks you’re taking.

I make no apologies for talking about some serious and somber subjects among them the risks of Death,  Serious Illness and Unemployment.

However if these entries help people make better decisions those serious and somber subjects will be well worth discussing.