Life Insurance Quotes: How Can I Tell If I Need Life Insurance?

Written By: Mike Carselle on April 25, 2010 No Comment

You hear a lot of talk these days about the importance of life insurance, and with life insurance rates falling to their lowest in history, there has never been a better time to shop for life insurance quotes online. The question many people ask is-is it really necessary for me to buy life insurance?

Well, shopping around for life insurance quotes may not be the most exciting activity ever, but the short answer is-yes, everyone who wants to be responsible should have some amount of life insurance. How much you need depends entirely on your individual situation.

For a person who is not married and has no dependents, it wont be very difficult to calculate your insurance needs. When browsing for life insurance quotes, you just need to keep in mind the amount of debt you are carrying plus the amount it would take to bury you. If you are being cremated, then this figure will be even lower. In most cases, $10,000 to $20,000 is good enough, with the amount of your debt being the main variable. If you are a relatively young and healthy person, you can usually get a term life policy for that amount of coverage for under fifty cents a day.

If you have dependents, then it’s completely different. In this scenario, when getting your life insurance quotes, you need to be accounting for all your debt(including home mortgage) and your income from today till the time your dependents can support themselves.

For example, let’s say you have 2 kids that are 3 and 7 years old, and your annual income is $40,000. Also, your total debts including your home are $200,000. In this case, you would want a 20 year term life insurance policy for about $1 million-$800,000 to compensate for income lost, and $200,000 to cover all debts. Bear in mind these are rough figures and every person’s situation will be a little different.

So the bottom line is that most people-if they are responsible-need to have at least some life insurance for themselves. For a single person without dependents, the level of urgency is lower, but you still need it if you want to see to it that you don’t leave your family with a financial mess to deal with. For a person who is married and/or has children, I can’t think of too many things that would be a higher priority than insuring that your family is protected if something were to happen to you. If this is you, then be sure you have enough life insurance coverage today.

Compare the lowest rates on life insurance quotes and get started today on the path toward securing your family’s future at www.lifeinsurancequotetoday