When you reach one of life's major milestones, the last thing that’s likely to be on your mind is your own death. But once the celebrations have died down a bit, that’s exactly what you should do.
Life insurance asks you to consider your mortality, but you don’t have to think about how and when you’re going to die. Instead, contemplate what life would look like for those around you if you were no longer around.
These visualisations will tell you if it’s a good time to take out life cover.
We’re not talking about whether or not there would be tears and grief (that goes without saying), but if your loved ones would be able to function financially.
Life’s twists and turns means that sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. By evaluating the situation at different life milestones, you’ll be able to ensure that you and your loved ones are adequately covered at all times.
Here are the four life milestones when you might consider life insurance:
1. You enter into a long-term partnership
During your single life, you’re entirely self-dependent. But that starts to change when you couple up with someone.
Of course, for the first couple of months (or even years), not a lot will change for you on the financial front. You might feel the benefit of having combined salaries, but you probably won’t depend on each other to live.
However, as you start to build out a life together, as part of a long-term partnership – whether you decide to get married or not – the dual income is often essential to life events such as being able to move out of the family home (or shared accommodation) and into a rental property.
As you design your lifestyle together, you’ll probably accumulate all kinds of subscriptions, direct debits and expenses which, combined, are beyond the affordability of one person.
If you or your partner were to die unexpectedly and you weren’t covered with life insurance, the surviving partner would likely have to revert their lifestyle and potentially be forced to make some serious cutbacks.
If you don’t want that for you or your partner, take out some life cover. Find out how much life insurance cover you need here.
2. You have children
When children come along, it’s a complete gamechanger. And no, we’re not just talking about the lack of sleep, the added worry and the disappearing social life…
Kids are crazy expensive. Child Poverty Action Group (CAPG) recently ran a report to find the average total of having children. They found that up to the age of 18, the cost of raising a child can be as much as a staggering £185,000[1].
A bit of quick maths shows that a child will cost you about £10,000 a year. For many parents, they’ll need to make cutbacks or adopt a slightly slower pace of life to ensure they can afford children.
Climbing the career ladder and increasing your salary can offset child costs. But things can come crashing down if mum or dad were to die.
Having a life insurance policy not only protects against financial devastation, the income it provides can ensure something representing a normal childhood for your little (or not so little) one.
Find out here what type of protection youI need as a new parent.
3. You become a stay-at-home parent
For some families, it makes sense for one of the parents to jack their job in and stay at home to look after the children.
However, whilst you (or your partner) aren’t bringing in any money anymore, it doesn’t mean you are of no monetary worth to the family.
Stay-at-home parents do a lot of unpaid ‘work’. The average mother on maternity leave spends about 37 dedicated hours engaging with their child or children every single week. Typically, they also spend seven hours of their time doing house chores, 120 minutes doing laundry, as many as eight hours cooking, not to mention six hours driving themselves or others around[2].
Who would do these jobs if the stay-at-home parent was to die or become too sick to manage them all? The other parent would need to call upon some help, perhaps in the shape of some paid childcare. Or they might decide to give up work to care for their vulnerable bereaved child.
Either way, there’s going to be a financial hole that needs filling somehow. Life insurance can do just that.
4. You buy your own home
Buying a house is an investment – but only if you keep up with the mortgage repayments until the end of the term, otherwise you face losing all the money that you’ve put into the property. So, when taking out a mortgage, it makes sense to guard yourself against this eventuality.
If you’re taking out a mortgage, your lenders may insist on you taking out a life insurance policy before they allow you to borrow the money. But it’s not compulsory and you don’t have to renew the policy for the length of the mortgage.
However, many homeowners continue to pay for life insurance cover anyway, retaining the peace of mind that comes with the product – that peace of mind being that if one of the people who contribute to the mortgage were to die, the payout would cover the outstanding debt.
Designed specifically for mortgages, a decreasing term policy provides cover for the length of your mortgage, with the payout tapering off over time to reflect the outstanding debt.
Find out how to protect your mortgage and your home.
Get life cover today
While these are the four obvious life milestones to consider life insurance, it’s never a bad idea to look into getting some cover. Generally speaking, the earlier in your life you take out a policy, the cheaper it is.
Generate some quotes with QuoteSearch to better understand the cost of cover. Even if you don’t follow through on a quote, your information will be securely stored, and is never shared without your permission.
To compare your free quotes from leading providers, click here.
[1] https://cpag.org.uk/policy-and-campaigns/report/cost-child-2021
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/womenshouldertheresponsibilityofunpaidwork/2016-11-10