Anonymous wrote:I would keep it as long as you have the mortgage. Otherwise, if you drop it and one of you dies suddenly, the other spouse is left covering the entire mortgage and might have to dip into other assets. The life insurance proceeds would enable you to pay off the mortgage.
Depends.. how much is left on the mortgage? PITI is pretty high, and OP said nowhere near paying it off.
As PP stated, ff one spouse passes, you'd have to carry the PITI yourself, and that might eat into your income.
IMO, I would keep it until you get the mortgage down to an amount where paying the PITI won't hurt on one or no income.
FWIW, our PITI is like $2500/month, and we have $150K left on the mortgage. Spouse is unemployed, but they have some savings we can tap into. We have a combined, all in, NW excluding house of $3.7mil. Fully funded 529 for both kids for in state.
One life insurance can more than pay off the balance of the house, but we would rather keep the life insurance until we no longer need to rely on my income for living expenses (about 2 years, fingers crossed).
At some point though, you should be able to self insure with your assets, excluding your house.