Brought to you by Pinnacle Life

Life Insurance is one of the things that comes along with being a grown-up. Most likely you didn’t even know about it when you were a kid unless you knew a family where someone died unexpectedly or got ill, and you heard ‘the grown-up’s talk about it.

Sometimes the first time you will hear the term ‘Life Insurance’ will be when you go to buy a house and the bank asks if you have it or you have kids and someone randomly asks if you’ve got your life insurance sorted. Before then the only insurance you probably thought about was for your car, which seems way easier to understand.

How the heck do you work out the value of your life?

When you buy a car you insure it for the amount you paid for it, or for the maximum value you can afford. It feels like simple maths.

Life Insurance is not that different if you think about what you need the insurance to pay for. With car insurance you want it to cover the repair costs if you have a crash or to replace it if it gets written off.

Life Insurance can’t give you a replacement life. But, it will help your family and loved ones have the life you want for them whether you’re here or not. To work out how much cover you need you have to think about:

• Do you have a mortgage that will need to be repaid?

• Do you have any other debt? Student loans, credit cards, hire purchase?

• How much income would your family need to replace each year?

• How many years would they need that income for?

• Are there other costs you’d like to cover?

• Are there any assets you could sell or other savings you could access?

(There’s a calculator on the Pinnacle Life website if you need help.)

Stay at home parents need life insurance too

The problem with life insurance is that those who need it most, don’t have it, or they can’t get it due to their health. It’s distressing to learn how few people with young kids have life insurance. Stay-at- home spouses have a special need for life insurance. Should a stay-at-home parent pass away, the remaining parent would find themselves suddenly paying for childcare and everything else a stay-at-home parent does on a day to day basis. That’s why it’s essential the parent at home has a policy.

Some people need less life insurance than others (and not because they never grow up)

Some people are lucky enough that financially they don’t have to worry so much about the unexpected spoiling their plans, as they have cash available to pay the immediate bills, or enough put away to pay for future expenses. So, they might only need a little bit or they might only need it for part of their lives.

It’s not hard to be a grown up, here’s a few tips to get started

• Shopping for life insurance is easy online.

• How much life insurance do you need? The simplest rule is ... whatever you can afford to maintain long-term.

• Stay at home spouses need cover too.

• Some people need more than others, work out what works for you.

At Pinnacle Life, we have calculators to help you work out what you need, and you can apply online, so in less than ten minutes you could have this sorted out.