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There’s a reason why I’ve never signed up for any insurance program, even though several friends and acquaintances have tried to convince me with all kinds of “guaranteed future benefits.”
The reason goes back to one painful story-something my father experienced decades ago. A story that taught me how the “future value of money” is never as simple as what’s written in an insurance brochure.

The Story Begins in the Late 70s–80s

My father was an elementary school teacher. His salary wasn’t much-just a few tens of thousands of rupiah at the time. But like many honest people of that era who dreamed of a better future, he joined an insurance program. The monthly premium was 1,000 rupiah, and the company promised a payout of 400,000 rupiah when the policy matured.

Back then, 400,000 rupiah sounded like a fortune.

To give you some context: around the same time, my father bought 8 ares of land for just over 100,000 rupiah. So yes-400,000 rupiah felt like a massive amount of money.

More Than Twenty Years Later…

Time passed. Around 2003-2004, my father asked my younger sibling to withdraw the insurance payout-after faithfully paying premiums for over twenty years.
But what did we actually receive?

Not 400,000 rupiah as promised.
After various deductions-administration, fees, taxes-the final amount was only around 350,000 rupiah.

And what did that amount mean in the early 2000s?

Absolutely nothing.

My father’s salary during that time had reached 2-3 million rupiah per month. Prices of everything had gone up drastically.
The money he received from 20 years of insurance premiums wasn’t even enough for a week’s household shopping.

Inflation: The Silent Thief

This is the part that many people overlook when considering long-term insurance.

Inflation doesn’t care about promises.
Inflation doesn’t care about “future value projections.”
Inflation moves slowly, quietly, but relentlessly-eating away the real value of your money.

In the late 1970s, a teacher’s salary might have been in the tens of thousands.
Twenty years later, salaries had increased by more than 200 times.

But the insurance payout?
It stayed the same.
The number never adjusted to the real-world changes.

What once looked like a huge sum in the past eventually became nothing more than pocket money.

Now Compare It With Land

Let’s go back to the land my father purchased.

He bought 8 ares of land for around 100,000 rupiah.
By 2004, if he had sold it, the land would have been worth roughly 80 million rupiah (assuming 10 million per are).

Now compare:

• Insurance after 20+ years → 350,000 rupiah

• Land after 20+ years → 80,000,000 rupiah

The difference is staggering.

Is this the insurance company’s fault?
Not entirely.

Is it my father’s fault?
Not at all.

The real problem is our expectations about the future value of money.

So, Is Insurance Always Bad?

No, it isn’t.

I’m not anti-insurance. I’m just cautious.

I’ve heard many success stories-people whose lives were saved financially after being diagnosed with serious illnesses. I also understand how insurance agents work hard and earn commissions from clients’ premiums. That’s normal and fair.

But from my family’s experience, I learned something important:

Money loses value unless it grows faster than inflation.

If your insurance product only “stores” money without growing it, the real value will almost certainly shrink over time.

Life Is About Choices

Whether you choose to buy insurance or not, it all depends on your needs, financial situation, and personal priorities.

What matters most is making an informed decision-because not everything that looks “beneficial” is truly profitable, and not everything that looks “bad” is necessarily harmful.

My experience doesn’t make me reject insurance completely.
It simply makes me more careful, more realistic, and more aware of how money works over time.

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