- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
December 2011 Moms
let's talk life insurance, any agents in the house?
Do you and/or DH have life insurance coverage? Is it the LI offered through your employer? Do you buy more than employer provides? How did you decide how much LI you need? How did you choose a LI company (if purchased separate from employer)?
DH has some LI provided by his employer which is equal to two years salary. Before DD was born almost 3 years ago and I was working full time I had LI but since leaving to be a SAHM we haven't purchased any LI to cover me nor have we purchased additional LI for DH. 
When we first talked about buying more we spoke with our car/home insurance rep (State Farm). She provided a worksheet to complete to decide how much we might need. After chatting for a few minutes during our meeting (and without completing the worksheet) she suggested DH have $750K and $500K for me (we told her what our debts were). This seems like a lot. We have a modest home and owe about $15K in student loans combined but have no other debt. I know the LI money, God forbid we have to utilize it, is often used to pay off a mortgage, cars, other loans, and to provide for minor (and sometimes) adult children and their education so maybe these figures really are reasonable. Also, I know you can buy a certain kind of LI (term is escaping me right now) where you pay a bit more now but at the end of the term, if you're still living, you get that money back (minus interest, of course). Some have said to just take that "extra" money you'd pay for this type of LI and invest that separately because you will earn some interest on it.
What are your thoughts, ladies?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: let's talk life insurance, any agents in the house?
I used to work for an insurance brokerage, so we got DH a policy through them, I think for $250K. He also has coverage through his job that's equal to his salary. I don't know what kind of work your husband does or how much he makes, but what the State Farm agent suggested seems like an awful lot!
The three basic types are term life, whole life and universal life. I know for term life, you don't get anything back at the end of the term. I can't recall the differences between WL and UL and when I Googled it just now I made myself even more confused. I feel like the kinds of people that usually got those kinds of policies had a LOT of money...but then again, that's also who we mostly catered to.
If I were you, I'd probably shop around a little and get a second opinion. Check out MetLife, Cincinnati Life, NY Life, or ING and see what they suggest, what their rates are, etc.
we both have policies through work and individual policies. general rule is 10 times your annual salary. we took out enough through our individual policies to not quite cover 10x our salaries, but took into consideration the following:
-paying off ALL debts (assumed 2 cars even though we only have 1 payment at the moment, SLs, house... we carry no CC debt)
-time off work that would be potentially unpaid for grieving, settling all death issues
-covering childcare since our needs would drastically change
-partially covering DS' college
we then got over the 10x salary part with our work policies, which are portable (meaning if we leave, we can pay a monthly premium and keep them). although most financial people don't suggest it, we did do a return of premium policy for both of our individual policies, meaning at the end of the 30 year term, we get all of our premiums back.
i originally went through selectquote.com, others i know have used accuquote or their homeowner's policy company. i ended up using ING Reliastar based on the rate i got from selectquote. DH went through them as well.
when i was looking around a couple years ago, everyone told me it is NOT a good idea to just have a work policy. apparently they are often slow to pay out. we felt more comfortable having both policies.
We both have policies at work but it's like $10k or something small like that.
So we purchased legit policies through State Farm (they provide insurance for our houses, cars, misc). We both have six-figures each, this number was arrived at after we discussed our incomes, debts, overall lifestyle. We do not have term, we have the universal (?) policy, where the amount will remain the same forever and we can borrow money against it later. We had to lock in an amount because DH has type 1 diabetes and his rate is only going to get worse the longer we would have waited. His premium is almost double mine!
We got State Farm policies too. I liked playing with their online calculator: https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/life_annuity/life-calculator/calculator.asp
It's entertaining but informative. Our agent walked through it with us as well and we wound up getting a couple 6 figure term life policies we'll eventually want to convert to whole life maybe.
Try the calculator tho, it's amazing how much $$$ you need to get your family set up if something were to happen.