Hellobee Boards

I worked with Life Insurance before becoming a stay at home mom. For people in their 20s/30s who are healthy (no high blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol, other health concerns) they usually recommended a 10 yr term and then to reevaluate the situation after that lapses. there are many other factors to consider in the future (ex-if you'd want enough coverage to enable your children to go to college with insurance proceeds should you pass away)...

We have term life insurance that is the life of our mortgage. It's recommended most homeowners do a 20-30 year depending on what you've got left to pay off on your house.

We also have whole life insurance on top of term to cover other "expenses"

The downfall to the 30 year term policies is that they will lapse at say age 60 when you are much more likely to become uninsurable. There are typically conversion options but from the quotes I've seen while I worked with insurance (multiple companies) they are typically very expensive policies, which makes sense because the only people who convert are those with health problems that can't go through underwriting. There are also stipulations on the time frame in which you can convert and unfortunately people often miss them. The target age for long term policies are typically to people in their upper 30s and 40s which puts you in a good position to by long term coverage (universal life or whole life) after the term policy lapses. Regardless of what you choose, make sure you really understand how the policy works and the fine print. There can be a lot of little nuances that make things complicated.

@Beyond2: While I agree with you that reupping would be expensive at 60, I don't see a reason you would need to. 30 years from now, our mortgage will be paid off in full and our children will be through with college. So one spouse dying doesn't leave a huge financial burden on the remaining spouse. Not to mention, once you are 59 1/2 you can draw from IRAs without penalty should you need additional funds.

I'm in Canada so I don't know if things are different here, but we have small whole life policies that will cover burial expenses when I die, and DH and I both added 10 year term riders for our current needs. Every 10ish years we'll re-evaluate what we need and go from there.