While everyone recognizes the vital role of the family’s main wage earner, few people stop to think about the cost of services performed by the stay-at-home spouse. This includes childcare, looking after the home, preparing meals, and many other time-consuming activities, like carpooling, laundry, and grocery shopping, to name a few!
What if something happened to the person who handles all those responsibilities? Often the parent who is left behind is unable to provide the same stable home-life that their family was comfortable with. Not only has the family been devastated emotionally, but their entire way of life will have to change.
This worst-case scenario happened to our own agent, Thomas Gardner. One of his customers decided not to get life insurance on his stay-at-home spouse, who was the homemaker for their children. Sadly, she passed away very unexpectedly while all three children were under 10. For years, the financial burden was extremely difficult to handle. He had to become dependent on a lot of people for a long time.
There is no easy way to determine how much life insurance is enough, because no two families have exactly the same needs. The appropriate amount of insurance protection could equal the approximate financial value of the services the stay-at-home spouse provides times the number of years before the youngest child is out of college. For example, if that value is $50,000 per year and it will be 10 years before your youngest child is out of college, a $500,000 policy would be a good start. If you have extremely young children, you also have to calculate the need for day care. The average price of full-time care at day care can be as high as $15,000 per year.
Please contact our office to speak to one of our knowledgeable life insurance agents to determine what type of policy would be best for your family!