When you see how insurance fits in the world of risk management, it changes your view on so many things. As a consumer, you want somebody else to pay for bad outcomes. You minimize or eliminate your risk by buying protection from an outside agent. It's a wager that the insurer could earn more from premiums than they would pay out in claims. Actuarial tables are basically the morning line odds in horse racing.

And when you're in business, for example, you de-risk by adding clauses that have a contractor pay you liquidated damages if they cause the project to fall behind schedule. In fact, hiring a contractor rather than doing a project in-house is also a risk management move as you can then sue them if something goes wrong.

The point is, you want the risk to be somebody else's problem. And you pay them to take the fall for you, which is insurance.