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How Long Will I Need Life Insurance?

Written by Aaron Pinkston, Mon, Nov 23 2009

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You may have noticed that Clarifinancial asks how long you want your life insurance policy to last. It seems a weird question at first. But it is only weird because other places are not asking the same thing.

In reality, asking how long you want your policy to last allows us to avoid technical questions like “term vs. whole life” or “non-participating whole life vs. secondary no-lapse universal life”. I honestly feel that if the average life insurance shopper spends too much time thinking about these questions, they are wasting a lot of time, eliminated options that might be helpful, and possibly falling into analysis paralysis.

Instead of worrying about the tools professionals use to customize a job for you, spend your time thinking about the outcome you expect. That’s where this question comes into play.

So how long should my policy last?

Take 30 seconds with me and think back on why you are considering life insurance in the first place. Suppose we were sitting down, and I asked, “So why do you need life insurance?” You would say….

Focus on that reason. Say it out loud or write it down to make your ultimate goal clear. We are not all the same, so nobody can answer this question for you.

Now that you have that goal in mind, how many years will it take to reach the end of that goal? Again, say it or write it down.

The short answer

The short answer to the question that seemed crazy just a minute ago is what ever you just said or wrote down.

Repeat it again. That’s the answer.

Sometimes it gets complicated

But because we are human, sometimes there are other concerns to go along with our simple answer. The two most common reasons it gets complicated are:

  1. We are worried life insurance for that period of time will cost too much.
  2. We have multiple reasons we need life insurance, each with a different time frame.

If you are worried about the cost of life insurance over such a long period of time, I suggest you use Clarifinancial to look without a sense of obligation. Go ahead and see how much meeting your needs actually costs. There is really no way to know if it will be too much until you take a look at customized life insurance quotes.

If it is, in fact, too costly, try creating another quote request with a shorter number of years, but plan on paying more in the future. By all means, please do not reduce the amount of life insurance your family needs. They do not need your help less when you are gone simply because your protecting help is costly.

Secondly, if you have multiple reasons with different timelines, try combining them all into one long timeline. Life insurance companies will almost always let you decrease the amount of insurance over the life of you policy, reducing the amount you pay each time you step down. This could turn into a very affordable and flexible solution for you.

The other alternative is to create multiple quote requests for each time period to compare. This may be a more expensive way to proceed because each policy often has its own start-up costs, but you never know until you try. Part of the beauty with Clarifinancial is that because you are able to get personalized life quotes from multiple agents to compare without any sales pressure, you have no obligation and no phone calls from agents if you don’t find something that works for you.

So go ahead and give it a try now. You might be surprised how affordable protecting those you care about can be. Getting accurate comparisons without the hassle has never been easier.