Do you have term life insurance? - Page 2

[EviesMom]

We have I believe 15 year term insurance. Insurance agents have always tried to sell us way more than we want in every regard, bc that's how they make their commission $.

The thing to really consider is what you or DH would need paid in the event that something happened to one or the other of you. Literally, could you move? Would you move? Would you pay off your mortgage? Would you pre-pay college tuition? Etc. We tried to give ourselves enough time and funds that the kids college $ would be covered and that we could pay off the mortgage. I don't think we'll need nearly the value of $ we have in insurance now 15 years from now. More of college will be funded, more of mortgage will have been paid, we might well have moved to a newer, cheaper location...

[staceychev]

Originally Posted by phathui5

Dh and I each have a 20 year term policy. The idea being that in 20 years, we won't be financially responsible for the children, but if one of us dies in the next 20 years, that leaves us needing money to pay bills and stay home with the kids.

That's exactly our logic. We both work, so we'd both be able to manage financially without the other. The big deal is our children when still minors.

[tayndrewsmama]

Originally Posted by aircantu1

But if you are diagnosed with anything in the next 10 or 15 years you won't qualify to renew it -- or your rates could just go through the roof.

With dh's, there was an amount that you could get and anything above would allow you to renew or turn over to a whole life policy with no health exam. This is with Farmer's Insurance. I don't know if every place does that though.

[MiriamF]

Thanks to all who responded. It was interesting to read the various decisions people made. My husband is still adamant about getting the cheapest possible insurance for now though for a few reasons:

1) We're trying to be extremely careful with money, with an upcoming temporary layoff and the fact that we don't own a home and aren't anywhere close to buying one. We want to continue to save up cash, fast.

2) There is a good bit of difference between the 10 and 30 year policies. It isn't just pennies. More like over $100 a year.

3) Inflation, at the rate we're going, could cause the 250-300K policy that we're taking out now to be totally useless in ten years.

So, we're going to compromise, and I think we're going to settle for a 20 year for him (because he gets a preferred plus rate for being so darn skinny) and a 15 year for me, since I'm overweight and will cost a bit more. This works well for us, as other pointed out, in 20 years we won't have dependent children, so it's good enough. (Assuming we have our second and last kid in 2 years, therefore his policy expires just when the second kid turns 18).

The idea of life insurance never even occurred to us until our in-laws were visiting at christmas time and FIL brought it up. I'm not sure I even understood exactly what it was about prior to that!