[USER]

Hi, I have a question about life insurance. Do we need it? Hubby works, makes enough to cover about 60% of our expenses.

I stay home and run our rentals, which also could cover about 60%.

Net worth about 1 million but mostly tied up in real estate.

The reason I was thinking we might need life insurance is Husband does not do anything with the rentals and would be lost on what to do and how to manage them, so I’d like to think he’d have the option to just pay them off and hand it to a PM.

And for me, if he passed away I could probably limp along or sell a rental or something, but it would certainly alleviate a lot of stress if there was a big chunk of cash that would cover expenses while figuring everything out.

And if we both passed would make sure the kids have plenty, although with our assets and family I think the kids would be fine.

Very happily married, two kids under 10 ( wanting more), we are 37 years old and mostly healthy ( overweight, asthma etc).

Anything beside we should consider?

Long term care insurance?

[Ron]

You buy insurance to cover specific needs. When you buy a home and you do not want your spouse saddled with a mountain of debt if you die, insurance gives you the assurance that that will not happen.

Want to insure that your kids have money for college even if you die early?

Buy insurance. Want to assure your spouse that they will not have to return to the workforce if you predecease them? Buy insurance.

There are many perfect applications for insurance.

Term insurance is a cheap solution to this problem. Buy 20 or 30-yr term insurance and DO NOT buy any of the riders. That is where they make their money.

But the insurance on-line from select quote or other places on the web.

They have many great companies selling their insurance there.

By the time our 20-yr policy ended, we no longer needed insurance.

Our house was paid for, our kids were out of college, and we had money to meet every need in our accts.

But I loved having insurance for many years; it allowed me not to worry about certain issues at night when your mind drives you crazy.

[Tara]

Reading this I assumed you don’t have kids and then BAM you have two.

Having kids without having (term) life insurance is a terrible risk to take.

Please get it in place immediately.

[Randa]

My parents owned a small business and we all had good jobs outside of that business (self, spouse, sister and brother-in-law) but when my parents died unexpectedly within 3 months of each other, we were so thankful for the life insurance policy.

It allowed us to ease up on the throttle so that we could navigate getting all our ducks in a row and making hard, life changing decisions on top of focusing on our healing and our children’s healing.

Life insurance is a good safety net.

It depends on your family dynamic but it sounds like in your case I would definitely want some.

[Jason]

As cheap as term life is… Look at it as making your life easy for a few years while you’d be grieving the loss of your spouse.

You should both have a policy.

Later on, when everything is paid for, and money won’t help with your grief and transition, let it lapse

[Rick]

At least get some quotes. 10 year term should be fairly inexpensive. You could find 20 year a “better value” but based on your info above I don’t think it is necessary.

Especially if you diversify over time into enough to pay off the rental debt.

It should be a fairly easy quote effort and fairly low cost to cover the risk.

[张扬]

Do you have disability insurance? You’re more likely to become disabled than die at that age, but people often neglect that and only think about life insurance.

Given that you have young kids who will be dependent on you for many more years, if you can get cheap term life insurance then I would do that.

[Linda]

We’ve had term life for 15 years or so. We just paid off our house and have no other debt. 2 of our 3 kids are now grown and supporting themselves.

I just asked our financial planner if we can cancel the life insurance and she advised not to quite yet.

So, I agree you need it.

[Jason]

I would get Term insurance. Today. Its so cheep. (by the way, its great to have before someone gets sick….

real sick and no one will insure you then.

Maybe if you had paid off rentals and a much much higher net worth.

Sounds like most of what you have is tied up in rentals, which is great, but your hubby wants nothing to do with it, and I bet your kids under 10 are the same.

If kids were 18 ish different story all together.

I’m starting to get into that stage, but I just picked up a policy for another 10 years, because its so cheep.

[Sean]

Your husband definitely needs disability insurance as well. Not sure you’ll be able to get any if you don’t have earned income, but not positive on that answer.

[Author]

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