Putting a Price on Life

Filed under , by Alison on 9:00 PM

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Recently The Tall One and I met with a financial advisor to talk primarily about life insurance.  Normally I don't go too crazy pondering all of life's "what ifs" but when it comes to life insurance, the "what ifs" are all that matter.  And there are certainly a lot of them.   The big thing we would want our life insurance to cover is the mortgage, along with a year or so's worth of expenses.  That way, the surviving spouse wouldn't have to worry about paying the bills while adjusting to life as a single parent.  But that's where things get complicated.  


Choosing my "worth" was fairly easy and we decided a shorter term for me simply because once our kids are older, it will cost a lot less to get childcare.  If TTO were to pass away, I would move to the state where my parents and most of my family live and, of course, I'd get a job (I have a degree in elementary education).  I don't want to have to depend on the life insurance money, I would want to take care of myself and my children, but I do want some money there to help ease the transition and  (now this is where things get really tricky) to help with my retirement.  We're just not sure how much would be enough to replace what he won't be socking away in his 401K.  It would depend a lot on how old I was when this happened.  If I were still young, I would have a bit of time to build up my own retirement funds.  If I'm older, the amount of years that TTO would have already contributed to his 401K would be higher and more helpful.  We don't want to overbuy because every dollar is so important to us now, but at the same time I wouldn't want to find myself coming up short should the unthinkable happen.

It makes me sick to be thinking about these things and writing about them in such a matter of fact way, but it's a "what if" that TTO and I just can't afford to toss aside.