What is life insurance?
Life insurance is a lump sum that is paid out to the policy owner (e.g. your spouse, partner or trustees of your family trust or your estate) when you die or become terminally ill.
Why should parents consider life insurance?
As a parent, you have new responsibilities. One of these is to provide protection for your family if you or your partner should die.
Life insurance can help your family survive financially if you were to pass away. It’s difficult enough to deal with the loss of a loved one without experiencing financial worries as well. Not only would your family need to deal with funeral expenses but potentially also a mortgage, weekly bills and childcare costs. Some people also like to provide a meaningful inheritance for their children.
Do both parents need life insurance?
Whether you’re a single-income or two-income family, it's advisable that both parents should always carry enough life insurance so that either one of you could carry on financially in the event that something happened to the other.
It’s important to recognise the true cost of stay-at-home parents. Just because a stay-at-home parent doesn’t earn a salary, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt their family financially if they were to pass away. The website www.msn.com puts the value of a homemaker at just over NZ$170,000 per annum*. Consider the additional cost of childcare, cooking and cleaning that the surviving income earning spouse would need to pay for of the stay-at-home parent were to pass away.
*http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/RaiseKids/ThePriceOfAMom.aspx
How much cover will I need?
The question of how much cover you need should be based on your individual circumstances. Please download our Money Assessment Chart, where you can evaluate some potential factors that you need to take into consideration when working out how much cover you may need.
Did you know?
To provide a taxable annual income of $60,000 a year for a 10-year period, you would need approximately $518,000* to invest. Would your life cover be enough to support your family’s lifestyle for this period?*Assumes an average rate of return of 6% and the income inflation adjusted at 3%.
How are premiums calculated?
Premiums are based on gender, age, whether you’re a smoker or not, any pre-existing health conditions you have, and the amount of insurance you want to buy.
Life insurance can be a purchase that you forget about until you need it. Hear from some of our claimants as to how their life insurance cover helped them here>>
Get a life insurance quote now
Find out how affordable life insurance can be by getting an online life insurance quote or call 0800 379 372 and speak to one of our consultants.