Life Insurance

nikkim76

How much should you have for yourself and your LO's? I wasn't sure how much was too much or too little.

BizEB

DH and I have a ton on ourselves.  Enough so that if one of us died, the other could live off the interest without working, even though we'd both probably keep working.  More than enough so that if DH and I died together, the guardians of our kids wouldn't have to work and our kids would be fully set in terms of schooling.

I don't have any on my kids and won't buy any for them. 

MagPie08

It completely depends on your debts, income levels, etc. We purchased term insurance for me & DH through our financial advisor. You can get an estimate of how much you should carry using a calculator like this:

https://www.edwardjones.com/en_US/resources/calculators/life_insurance/index.html

I will not be getting life insurance on my kids.  

mmbench

For the LO's, we have a $10k rider on Dh's policy to cover any funeral expenses.

For DH and I, through work we have twice our salaries.  Then we bought term policies to bring us up to $1million total.

DarthBaby

It really depends what you want it to cover. We wanted ours to cover all debts (mortgage, loans etc.), college costs for the children and then some "replacement" income for what you would lose for the spouse. After figuring out what all of that cost, we got a little more for cushion. And it was within our monthly budget to have.

We will have no insurance on the children.

AlishaMay

Whomever you get your insurance though will be able to help you figure this out, but it really depends on lot of factors, and what you want to cover.  If something were to happen to your spouse, you would want to cover funeral expenses for sure, but what about your mortgages, debts, medical costs, would you continue to work?  And the same questions would go for you too.  As far as the kiddos go, you'd of course want to cover funeral expense, plus extra in case of high medical costs, and whatever grieving time you and your spouse would be out of work.

kimarino13

We have enough on ourselves that if something happened to one of us, the other wouldn't have to worry about working.

We have something small on the girls that would cover funeral costs.

caden

We have enough for DH that if he dies I'll have more than enough to stay home and send them to college. If I die he'll have more than enough to cover a nanny/college. 

We will not get life insurance for our LO's. I know some people feel more comfortable with that, and that's fine, but we only use life insurance as income replacement.

DeniseMancini01

How much life insurance a person needs depends on individual factors. There is no fixed formula to calculate this. However, online life insurance calculators can be very useful. If you want to purchase life insurance, you are doing so to offset the financial repercussions of your death. Your family would have to deal with expenses related to your death (medical bills, funeral expenses, etc.). They would need money for living expenses, education, etc. If your mortgage payments are not cleared, consider this too. So when you die, your family should be able to pay off all these expenses comfortably.

This is a difficult calculation, but insurance experts usually recommend aiming for a death benefit of 7 ? 10 times your current annual income. Buying life insurance for your loved ones is again a personal decision. However, it makes sense to buy for the breadwinners in the family first, and then cover the loved ones. A lot of life insurance companies offer very affordable child life insurance policies that you can consider.

Denise at AccuQuote
Disclaimer: I work for AccuQuote and this is my personal opinion.