Comments on: How Much Life Insurance Do I Need?

By: Freedom 48

Freedom 48 — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:31:44 +0000

For the time being we each have enough life insurance that if one of us were to die, the other person could use their life insurance to pay off both of our houses…. and could easily live on the one remaining salary.
Once we have children we’ll bump everything up as childcare costs would come into play. We’ll change our life insurance amounts so that they’ll pay off both houses as well as pay for childcare.

By: timelessfinance

timelessfinance — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:12:52 +0000

Buy term for the following amount: your liabilities + 5 years avg income x dependent + winding up costs (funeral, legal fees) + bare minimum (e.g. 60k) to support your partner for a few extra years IF he or she doesn’t work and has no reasonable prospect of getting a decent job. There. No whole life, no fancy assessments. Done. Quit waxing philosophical and go buy term life insurance. Worry about insuring against long life (e.g. building a pension) rather than insuring against death; that’s where it gets complex.

By: Denise

Denise — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:40:49 +0000

Great article! Very interesting.

By: SavingFreak

SavingFreak — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 23:17:14 +0000

@Impulse Magazine — That’s funny, I thought the death rate was still at 100%

By: ray

ray — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:02:44 +0000

This is a great post on life insurance, Now I see that you have a defunct question about deciding whether you need life insurance or not. I would emphasis if you are single it is more important that you have a small policy to bury yourself.
Great stuff

By: DIY Investor

DIY Investor — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:17:32 +0000

Another way to look at it is as follows:
only buy term life and typically only buy it to replace necessary income (there is a use for estate planning purposes but that’s a separate issue). How much? Take $1.0 million, knock off the last zero and get $100,000. Divide by 2 and this gives 5%. $1.0 million will replace $50,000 of income.
Of course if the spouse remarries etc. this will be a bit of a windfall.

By: Impulse Magazine

Impulse Magazine — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 01:47:58 +0000

I think that life insurance is more important than ever as the death rate continues to decline