Part of estimating your needs in retirement and also in buying life insurance is to know your likely life expectancy. Although kind of morbid, one calculator to help you do this is The Longevity Game by Northwestern Mutual. You just answer a few questions about your lifestyle and family history, and it gives you a number based on their actuarial tables. Fun animations too!

It turns out my median life expectancy is 85, while my wife’s is 95. Not sure how she plans on enjoying a decade without me, but I have been working out more this week as a result. 🙂 This site was found inside one of the 18 books I am trying to read simultaneously, Worry-Free Investing. The books uses it to show that for couples, there is a very good chance at least one of you will reach 95 or 100. So if you want to retire early, you basically need a portfolio that you can live off the income essentially forever while also having the principal keep up with inflation.

This is not how I like to get reminded of things, but sometimes that’s just how it goes. I hope all those out there affected by the floods are at least safe. A few months ago I wrote about buying flood insurance even if you are not required to by your mortgage lender. This means you are outside the 100-year floodplain, but could still be in the 500 year floodplain (1 in 500 chance each year, or 0.2%). Check if you are in a flood plain here. We got quotes, but never actually got around to buying a policy due to a combination of cost concerns and simply forgetting about it.

1 in 500? Why bother? Well, reports say that one third of Iowa is currently underwater. From one local newspaper:

“We’ve been taking a lot of calls, but most people don’t have flood insurance,” said State Farm Insurance Agent Doug Valentine. “This flood has blown through the 500-year flood plain and most only have to have insurance if they are in the 100-year flood plain because the banks require it.”

Valentine said many homeowners will soon face a difficult decision on what they will do given many will still have mortgage payments to be made and no insurance to cover rebuilding. “They may have to plow it down and will have $200,000 in payments on a $100,000 house,” he said.

This got me thinking – how likely do you think it is that your house will burn down, which is a major reason for homeowner’s insurance? Perhaps a 0.2% chance each year of severe flooding is worth insuring against. Insurance is all about paying to transfer the risk for events that can crush you. On that note, I also will need to check if our policy cover sewer backup, which has also caused a lot of damage in the Midwest.

There are a bunch of different ways to determine how much life insurance you need, from a simple “ten times your salary” to complex Monte Carlo simulations. Somewhere in between is the “capital needs analysis”, which is often used by insurance brokers and financial planners. This is what most online life insurance calculators use (examples here, here, and here), although I like the idea of doing it by hand to play with the numbers. I have a brochure from my State Farm agent with some stats, and also found another good example in this worksheet.

What is your goal?
Here’s the fun part. You get to imagine you’re dead. Will the remaining partner stay at home with the kids? Work and pay for daycare? Some people basically want to replace everything – their future income and also leave an inheritance or other lump-sum. Others want to make sure their dependents would be able to live as close to the “same life” as possible. This means staying in the same house, working (or not working) at the same jobs, driving the same cars, the same lifestyle. Then there is the “adapted life” approach, where maybe they would downsize somewhat, but have all the critical areas covered.

How much monthly income will your survivors need?
It’s usually easier to think of this monthly, and then multiply by 12. Include housing, transportation, education, childcare, insurance, entertainment, and perhaps also regular retirement savings. The average cost of daycare for a 4-year-old is around $8,000 per year. Now subtract any sources of income. The survivor’s salary, existing passive or investment income, rental income, Social Security benefits, etc.

Then, you have to decide what amount of money can create this income. Lots of guessing on your rate of return and length of withdrawal period is involved here. If you are young, you could buy an immediate annuity which will pay out about 4% inflation-adjusted a year (a certain % will be taxable). This is the same as multiplying by 25. So to create an annual income of $40,000 per year, you’d need a lump sum $1,000,000. As you get older, the payoff gets better. A more conventional approach seems to multiply by about 15.

Add in lump sum expenses
You’ll probably want to take care of debts like student loans, credit cards, funeral costs, and medical bills. A recent survey put the average funeral cost at over $6,000. If you haven’t already accounted for it above in housing, you may want to pay off the mortgage on your home or set aside money for retirement. Finally, you may want to consider the education costs of your children. The average cost for tuition + room/board for an in-state college is now nearly $14,000 per year.

Add these two big numbers up, and you have you future capital needs. You can then subtract out the insurance you have through work if you like. Finally, you should subtract your current assets, taking into account their liquidation restrictions. The difference provides an estimate of how much life insurance to shop for.

This all sounds simple, but in going through it myself there are so many variables. For starters, most couples will probably have different insurance needs for each person. Do I really want to pay off the entire house, or just allot for the mortgage payment? How many kids am I supposed to plan for? I end up with a number anywhere between $500,000 to more than $1M depending on different assumptions. (I’m open to advice here.) The good thing is that I am hoping that each $500k of coverage will only be about $30/month. I also may end up buying multiple life insurance policies as life goes on and stack them on top of each other.

Inflation?
If you buy a 30-year term policy with $500,000 of coverage now, at 3% annual inflation that you benefit will only be worth half as much after 23 years. But I don’t really worry about that, because for every year that I keep living, I should be saving enough that I don’t need as much coverage. And after the end of my term, we should have enough assets so as to not need any life insurance at all.

I’m not an insurance or benefits expert, but while looking at life insurance I wanted to compare the coverage available from my employer vs. what I could buy on my own. As with most things insurance-related, there are big variations in group life insurance coverage, so I can only speak to what I have for the most part. We get a credit each paycheck for which we can spend on health, dental, life, and disability insurances.

Maximum Coverage
For my plan, I can only get up to $500,000 of coverage for myself and partner. So if I want more, my only choice would be to look privately for equivalent term life insurance.

Ability To Find Coverage
The best thing about group insurance from work is that your risk is spread across a big pool of people, so it should be easier to be granted coverage. But many workplaces still require you provide “evidence of insurability” once you increase your coverage limit past a certain amount. This may involve a simple questionnaire, or it could require a doctor exam and bloodwork. It seems unclear exactly how “healthy” you have to be in order to qualify for increased group coverage, but I’m guessing it would preclude major pre-existing conditions like cancer or heart disease. The limit where they start checking can also vary from $5,000 to $500,000.

Portability of Insurance
When you qualify for and buy a level term life insurance policy, you are guaranteed coverage for the length of that term (10, 20, 30 years, etc.). But if you rely on your employer’s group life insurance, usually the coverage stops when you leave the job. It’s almost like a 1-year term policy. My concern is, if you have you leave your job because you are seriously disabled, then you might end up both uncovered and unable to find new insurance.

However, looking around there might be some flexibility in certain plans. For one, you might have a “Waiver of Premium” benefit that continues the insurance protection through age 65 with no further premium payments should you become disabled. Or the policy may allow you to “continue coverage through an individual term policy without evidence of insurability as long as you continue to pay premiums”. Would this still be at the group insurance rates (minus employer subsidies)? A lot of this stuff seems to be left out of my Open Enrollment Guide, so I suppose an e-mail to the correct Human Resource person would be in order.

Cost
Many people get a certain amount of “free” life insurance from work, with the option to buy more. I think anything over $50,000 of coverage is paid with after-tax money, so I plotted out the monthly cost of my group plan vs. coverage levels below. I then went to Term4Sale and found the average of the top 5 quotes for both 15 and 30-year term insurance policy (rated A+ or better), for both the best tier of health (Preferred Plus) and the lowest allowable (Standard).

If you are youngish and in good health, even a long 30-year term policy is comparable to the group rates. Even if you are in average health, the cost of my employer group insurance is comparable to the premium on a 15-year term policy.

Summary
Again, this is only based on my plan, although I found my wife’s numbers to be similar. If you are lucky to have no-questions-asked insurance with high limits and you are in below-average health, it might be good to use your group plan. But if you are looking for extra coverage for a guaranteed period of time and are at least relatively healthy, it’s probably just as cheap if not cheaper to go with an individual plan. If you are an older worker, things may tilt back in favor to group life, but I haven’t run those numbers. In any case, it’s worth a comparison before your next Open Enrollment period.

We used to just buy some extra coverage from work due to the convenience factor, but why pay more when I could both save money and have a better, portable plan?

Up until now, there are two reasons I don’t have any privately-bought life insurance. For one, as I’ve mentioned nobody is actually dependent on my income. Wife is doing fine, don’t have any kids yet. We also have 1x annual salary’s worth of life insurance as a benefit from our employers, and she’ll get all my retirement account funds if something happens to me. The other reason is that I know that life insurance is priced based on tiers of health, and I’ve been secretly thinking that I can back into my high-school swim team physique and get the absolute cheapest level of life insurance.

However, I’m starting to think both of these reasonings are flawed.

I used to think that there was no need for life insurance if nobody needs your income. But perhaps I should amend this – You need to weigh the chances that someone will eventually need your income. For example, if I fully plan on having kids within the next 2-5 years then my income will probably be needed at that time. And as someone else mentioned in a comment, life is a funny thing and you never know when my wife might just get pregnant unexpectedly.

So the question is, do I really gain anything by waiting until the last minute? The risk I take is that in the meantime my health deteriorates and I become uninsurable. You might find out you have cancer, fight bank and end up in remission, and lead a long life. You develop a heart condition have it under control, and be perfectly functional. But in either case, nobody will be issuing you an affordable policy.

(This argument has also been used by an insurance salesmen telling me to insure my kids starting at birth with a whole life policy, but I think that is stretching things a bit.)

What about trying to get healthier first? The fact is that if I’m young and even slightly healthy, term life insurance is still going to be relatively cheap, whether or not I manage to stamp out my love of ice cream. One easy-to-use site to do some quick comparisons on is Term4Sale.com. Currently, it says I can get $500,000 of 20-Year Term insurance (non-smoker) for about $25 for the highest Preferred Plus tier. But the lower Preferred tier is only $5 more, and the even lower Regular Plus/Select tier is only $10 more per month. The site estimates that I can have both elevated cholesterol and raised blood pressure and still land in one of these groups.

I would say if you’ve been harboring this desire to get healthy for more than 6 months or so and haven’t made significant progress, it’s time to give it up and pay the extra $5 per month. 🙂

Finally, the current cost of term life insurance is still historically low, so there is not much incentive to wait for better overall rates. Here is the general trend over the last 10 years for 30-year term (click to enlarge):

Yet another thing that reminds me that I’m not getting any younger…

I’ve been noticing that multiple banks like Washington Mutual, Bank of America, and other banks have been offering me “free” Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) Insurance. Usually I get around $1,000 to $3,000 of complimentary coverage, just for being a valued customer. Awww, how thoughtful! At first glance, it sounds pretty good. That could cover a few funeral expenses in case I decide to go sky-diving again.

Of course, they are always “proud” to be able to offer you more coverage at a rock bottom price. Additional covered for you is only $1 per month for each $10,000 of coverage. But wait, that makes my $1,000 of free coverage worth…. 10 cents a month Hmm, they must value me a lot to spare $1.20 a year for me…

As you might guess, the price isn’t that great. And again it only covers accidental death, so it’s not as comprehensive as traditional term life insurance. But it does cover dismemberment, and somehow my morbid sense of humor was amused by the dismemberment payouts. I can just imagine some actuary researching on how many people lose a thumb and index finger on the same hand. Just a thumb? They’ll be fine.

100% Benefit
Death 🙁
Both Feet or Both Hands
Entire Sight of Both Eyes
One Hand and One Foot
One Hand and Sight of One Eye
One Foot and Sight of One Eye
Speech and Hearing

50% Benefit
One Hand or One Foot
Entire Sight of One Eye
Speech or Hearing

25% Benefit
Thumb and Index Finger on Same Hand

So, should I bother taking it? I’ll probably pass, but it is still free. If I add up all my offers over time I might eventually build up a nice bounty. Probably not worth giving up the personal information needed, though. Anyone else sign up?