$500k for me. $0 for DH. He is uninsurable. It sucks.

Term is more efficient life insurance. Whole is expensive and you can do your own investing.

OP here -These are great responses! thank you.

why are most of you choosing term vs. whole? I'm assuming that 19:38's policy has cash value tied to it?

DH has life through work, but its only 1x his salary. I work as a consultant so no insurance.

He is 53, I'm 48. 2 kids - 14 and 10. we have about $600K in retirement. We are trying to decide on whole vs. term. Pretty sure we are going to get LTC also - especially given how young our children are and still have HS and college to get through.

Anonymous wrote:5 times salary for each of us

Same here. 2 young kids. we are probably under-insured, but we both work and could probably survive on that - it would allow us to pay off the mortgage.

5 times salary for each of us

Anonymous wrote:We both work, have 20 year term life policies for $2.0M each. Still young and savings are lower, mortgage is high. Our FA said we should focus on income replacement should something happen to one of us so we bought policies to do that.

I don't understand disability policies... I work in an office gig (mostly email, meetings, calls.0, etc) so what would disability do for me? I guess I am having trouble thinking of a scenario where I become disabled but could not work in that setting...? I must be missing something...

Many types of serious illness - cancer, stroke, heart attack. Accident with a traumatic brain injury.

We both work, have 20 year term life policies for $2.0M each. Still young and savings are lower, mortgage is high. Our FA said we should focus on income replacement should something happen to one of us so we bought policies to do that.

I don't understand disability policies... I work in an office gig (mostly email, meetings, calls.0, etc) so what would disability do for me? I guess I am having trouble thinking of a scenario where I become disabled but could not work in that setting...? I must be missing something...

Anonymous wrote:Married 52yo here with two kids, 16 and 13yo. DH is 58.

I have $800K in term life insurance, DH the same. We both work.

I know this is not much by DCUM standards but we have only $90 K left on the mortgage with 4 years to go before it is paid off, and $300K saved for college. $1.6m saved for retirement. So if one of us died, it would be plenty.

We are similar and i have a $250K policy term ($250 per year) + 1 year salary for each of us from work. We have a bit more saved for retirement (but not such good shape on mortgage). When i ran the numbers I realized buying a policy for 8x each of our income was overdoing because we had already saved a significant amount. I think many people are oversold policies. When you look at social security & pension effects plus the fact that you have only one person to retire vs 2 it makes a difference.

Both late 30s, kids are 5 and under. Purchased term life policies when I was pregnant the first time, for $500k each. We both work, and also both have policies through work equal to one year's salary.

Our rationale was that we wanted the surviving spouse to be able to pay off the mortgage and own our home outright, plus have about a year of living expenses, which would allow the surviving spouse time and flexibility to figure out staying here vs moving away. We felt that whole life insurance would be an extra expense that we don't want/need.

We don't have LTC insurance. Both have short-term and long-term disability through work which is pretty bare bones, so we have an emergency fund that we continue to out money into in the event of something catastrophic. I have heard very mixed reviews of LTC policies from family members who are trying to get benefits paid out, so we haven't opted for that so far.

DH and I in early 40s. 2 kids 9 and 5. He works and has a $1 million term policy, mine is for $500K - I work part time and never make more than $50K. We are planning to increase this but haven't gotten around to it.

Married 52yo here with two kids, 16 and 13yo. DH is 58.

I have $800K in term life insurance, DH the same. We both work.

I know this is not much by DCUM standards but we have only $90 K left on the mortgage with 4 years to go before it is paid off, and $300K saved for college. $1.6m saved for retirement. So if one of us died, it would be plenty.

DH and I in mid-40s. Kids 12 and 9. Each have $1million 20-year term. I pay $50/month, $80/month for DH. We each have a few hundred thousand more through work bc it's so cheap.

Both have disability through work, as well as supplemental disability through our financial advisor.

Don't have LTC.

19:38 no LTC yet, will switch to that once DC finishes college and we o longer arty the disability.

Whole 2 mil. On each of us, disability insurance as close to own occupation we could get. We spend about 5500 a year on all 4 policies. 1 child age 8.

Specifically Life, LTC.

DH and I are in the market for both, and trying to figure out how much we need. Yes I am doing my own research but wanted to see what fellow DCUM'ers are choosing to do.

Age, # of children and does your spouse work as well?

How much life are you carrying and is it term or whole? why did you choose one over the other?

Do you have LTC?