Web Wealth:

What is insurance for, and why should I buy it? Everyone should ask and answer such questions early on. Here are sites that can help guide the way to understanding how insurance works.

Insurance worth having. A SmartMoney article explains why five types of insurance are "worth having." They are health, disability, auto, homeowners, and life insurance. Of course, it's the details, and the expense, that make it hard to know what sort of policy you need in each category and how much insurance is enough.

What is insurance? The U.K.'s TheSite.org is an informational resource geared toward young adults. This page defining insurance and explaining why people get it makes a good primer or refresher. "Put simply," it says, "insurance is a policy designed to make sure that you are no worse off after an accident or disaster (such as a flood or burglary) than you were beforehand." Being British, it refers to an insurance-policy deductible as an "excess." But mostly it's quite understandable.

Hammurabi's insurance. This article on the history of insurance traces insurance policies to the ancient Babylonian obelisk bearing the code of King Hammurabi. It does not say if any riders to the 4,000-year-old policy have kept it in effect. Another surprise is that the early American colonies were far behind Europe in the use of insurance, particularly because of the high risks of pioneering life. Links on this Investopedia page go on to explain terms associated with insurance, such as underwriting and risk.

Investopedia's Industry Handbook covers insurance among many of the major financial sectors, including autos and telecommunications. Here's the link to the insurance briefing.

Health history. A decade-old PBS program on the health-care crisis included this time line of the history of health insurance in the United States from 1900 - about when society stopped expecting doctors to treat hospital patients for free. The issues are still fresh.