Life Insurance For A Stay-At-Home-Mom
Your job as a stay-at-home-mom may not be financially lucrative but the role you provide in the home does have cost benefit associated with it. When you decide to become a stay-at-home-mom, life insurance, and possibly even long-term-disability insurance, should always be factored into your budget. Here is a savings tip: before you call your insurance agent, who is a salesperson, there are a few things you should consider in order to assess your own needs and avoid the up-sell.
Most stay-at-home-moms assume the role of childcare provider, housekeeper and cook. You may even be the bookkeeper as well. Homeschoolers need to consider the value-add of schooling expense. If you were not available to accomplish these tasks could the alternate caretaker of your children outsource all of that work that you do as a stay-at-home-mom and not suffer financially? For the average one income household, the answer is likely no; and asking the remaining care provider of your children to take on all of these tasks may be unreasonable. The good news is that term life insurance programs are relatively inexpensive; you just need to figure out what costs need to be covered and how long you foresee needing that amount of funds. With term life you choose a term duration of years and being a stay-at-home-mom, your needs ten or twenty years in the future may be vastly different than the needs that you foresee on the immediate horizon.
Childcare does not come cheap and if you have very young children, this should be at the forefront of your concern when deciding how much of a policy you need to purchase. Even if your children are school aged and attend school outside the home, it is best to consider the costs of afterschool care and even extracurricular activity. Call around to daycare in your local area and get an idea of pricing; if the person who will be taking care of your children in your absence works a forty hour work week be sure to add time for travel into the equation as well.
Housekeeping costs can vary depending on both region and what will need to be done. Will someone need to do your family’s laundry? Will the house need a good scrubbing twice a week or only once a month? Do your homework on this one and try to estimate how long this expense will burden the child’s caregiver. It is likely that once the children get older they can share some of the workload.
One hat you wear as a stay-at-home-mom may be that of the cook. In your absence how many meals out do you estimate will be needed per week and at what average cost? Will the cost of groceries go up if you weren’t there to clip coupons and search out special sales? Keep in mind that as children grow their appetites do as well so factoring in the teenage years with friends and rising food costs you may be wise to double the budget on this expense.
Bookkeeping is a common task of stay-at-home-moms. Perhaps your life insurance benefits will warrant a visit to a financial advisor or even a bookkeeper to take on the monthly activities of records, budgeting and paying the bills. Budget this into your needs.
Homeschooling may be your chosen method of education for your family; if you were no longer living, what would be the next best alternative? If private school is the answer do some research on cost including tuition, books and uniforms as well as fees for group activities such as clubs and sports. If public school is the next best choice be sure to add in a clothing allowance as well as sports and activity fees.
Other things you may want to consider financial allowance for when purchasing a life insurance policy include retirement, mortgage payoff, special occasions, vacations, first cars, weddings and college tuition. There may be things that your death benefits could provide that you would find a way to budget for if given the opportunity.
You can compare the average cost of life insurance to know what’s best in your budget. You can easily find all the data like cost, premium and cover online. All these costs may be set in stone now but inflation is a factor in this equation too. It is wise to factor in a rise of 3-4{566ca8c28ab9c0766b2d4dea465df3e3626e459289038dda6d8d916d382fb86d} annually in the cost of everything you have planned for.
Now that you have a good handle on what your life insurance needs are shop around and find coverage at a reasonable cost and pay close attention to exclusions. After your policy is in place consider writing a Will and Testament and include therein how you would prefer your benefits be spent in your absence.