Do Left Alone Parents Need Life Insurance?

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

It is very possible that you may need life insurance even after all your children are gone from the house.There are many different reasons why you made need life insurance once your children leave home. Your children might be in college or not be fully independent financially, life insurance may aid you in this scenario. You might already have enough saved up for tuition, your children's living expenses still continue though, social security benefits for surviving children and spouse will not continue though.. they are stopped once the children are out of high school.

There might also be other dependents that you need to support. Parents, disabled older children and others that are dependent on you financially would be helped out if you had life insurance if you died before them. You may want to offest a survivor's reduced social security benefits. If the dependent dies early, this means they did not receive any promotions or salary increases which may have increased the Social Security benefits. A life insurance policy will often help ease this concern.

Being financially devoted to mortgages, leases and car loans is an affliction that two incomes have. Life insurance on each earning spouse will help the requirements on joint mortgages stay afloat. It is wise to obtain life insurance even if you do not have dual operating financial dedications, as it will offset any losses that may occur.

In good practive, each family should have a reserve of money for rainy days. This emergency fund should be around two thirds to one half of the total yearly take home income. If this reserve of money doesn't exist, the family who loses the family member will be very financially exposed and sensitive without a decent fund or life insurance plan to compensate for these after death expenses and taxes.

Your children (and many young adults) usually do not have any plans for their funeral costs or other after death medical bills and estate alteration costs. State income and property taxes will be a burden that they will not think about in the short term. Thus life insurance provided by you will cover these obscene costs which can vary greatly but are most often very expensive.

Good life insurance will help prevent the reduction of income if one spouse is deceased after receiving Social Security retirement benefits. Both people in a couple receives the benefits, however the one who earns more gets one based directly on his or her income, while the one who earns less before retirement gets half or much less than the larger earning spouse. If a spouse dies and it happens to be the spouse who earned more before receiving retirement benefits, having good life insurance will help the single spouse recover from this loss of income.

You can even signify some of your life insurance premiums can be given to heirs or your favorite charities. This is commonly well thought of if your assets would have been liquidated without this option set forth.