Life Insurance Need Calculator
Your situation
Three fields. We replace a share of your income for as long as your family needs it, add what they'd have to pay off, then subtract what they already have.
Gross, before tax
Sets how many years of income to replace
Renters: enter 0
How we calculate this
The model adds up what your family would actually have to cover, then subtracts what they already have. Four pieces go in: income replacement (a share of your income for a set number of years), debt payoff (mortgage plus everything else), an education fund per child, and final expenses. Then out come your savings and any coverage you already carry. It's the DIME approach with the income piece made explicit instead of buried in a multiplier.
Why 75% of income, not 100%. Household spending includes the person being insured — their food, their car, their share of everything. Replacing 100% of income overshoots what the surviving family actually needs, sometimes badly, and you pay premiums on the excess for decades. 75% is a common planning convention; it's shown on the page and editable, because the right number depends on how much of your spending is really yours.
How many years. With children, the default runs until your youngest turns 18 — the years your family most depends on your paycheck. Without children, it defaults to a 10-year income bridge for a surviving partner: enough runway to restructure a life, not a permanent pension. Both are editable.
Everything is in today's dollars. We deliberately don't discount future needs to a present value. The assumption we're making instead — stated plainly — is that a payout gets invested and roughly keeps pace with inflation, so a dollar of coverage buys about a dollar of need whenever it's used. It's the honest simplification: discounting would produce a smaller, more precise-looking number resting on a return assumption we can't make for you.
About the college number. The default is four years of in-state public sticker price — tuition, fees, housing, and food per College Board's latest figures. Most families pay meaningfully less after grants and aid, and it excludes books and personal costs. It's a deliberately conservative placeholder; if you have a 529 or expect aid, edit it down.
What we don't model: Social Security survivor benefits, which can be substantial for families with young children and would reduce your real need — so this estimate leans conservative on purpose. Also not modeled: education cost inflation, a surviving spouse's income and career changes, and estate taxes. A stay-at-home parent's replacement value counts only to the extent you enter it as income.
Real scenarios
Two kids, a mortgage, and a group policy: $1,165,100
A $95,000 earner with a 6-year-old, two kids total, and $285,000 left on the mortgage needs 12 years of income replacement — $855,000 — plus the mortgage, $206,800 of education, and $8,300 of final expenses. Against $40,000 in savings and $150,000 of employer coverage, the gap is $1,165,100, about 12.3× income. Note how little the group policy covers: it closes roughly an eighth of the need, and it disappears the day the job does.
No kids, $70k income: still $523,300
A 10-year income bridge at 75% is $525,000, plus $15,000 of other debts and final expenses, less $25,000 saved — $523,300, or 7.5× income. People without children routinely assume they need nothing. If someone would struggle to pay rent or debt without your paycheck, that assumption is wrong.
The result nobody sells you: already covered
A $60,000 earner with a 14-year-old, one child, $50,000 saved and a $500,000 policy has a modeled need of $291,700 against $550,000 of resources. The tool says $0 — you're covered as modeled — and shows no product recommendation, because there is nothing to fix. A calculator that never returns this answer isn't a calculator.