A lot of life insurance information is targeted for men. Men have traditionally been the most frequent purchasers of insurance, and in particular, life insurance. However women also need life insurance, and for the same exact reasons that men do. Women also need to be able to pay their mortgages, replace lost income, have money available for funeral expenses, and provide the necessary long term security for their families. Life insurance is a form of protection, and a majority of women are not adequately protected. More and more women are purchasing life insurance, but those that do have life insurance often do not have sufficient coverage.
You may be asking the question, how much life insurance do I need? The answer is dependent on several factors that include your age, income and family.
Single people, especially those without dependents, are less apt to purchase life insurance because they don’t think it is necessary. Of all groups of people, single women are the least likely to have life insurance.
It is obvious that single parents have a need for life insurance, but why would a single woman who does not have children need life insurance? Even if you are a single women without children you may have a need for life insurance if you need to cover debts and loans that your family members could be responsible for in the event of your death. The good news is that life insurance premiums are very inexpensive for young, healthy women.
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After a woman marries or is in a long term committed relationship, life insurance starts to become more of an important factor even without children. If you and her spouse or partner have joint ownership on a home, life insurance can be very important. Once you have children, life insurance is absolutely necessary. This is true for both working mothers as well as women who are stay at home moms.
For women who work outside of the home, it is obvious what the value of life insurance is. If your household depends on two incomes, and if your income was lost, the financial impact on your family’s well being could be devastating.
Women who stay at home caring for their children full time still need life insurance protection. All the work you do in caring for your family and home has a monetary value. If you were not there to do this work, your family would have to spend money on home and child care. Life insurance can provide the necessary funds for paying for these services in the event something happens to you.
Another important factor to consider when it comes to life insurance, is that women tend to live longer lives than men do. Nearly sixty percent of U.S. women are living alone by the age of 85. Fifty percent of women 75 or older who live alone are living in poverty. One of the main reasons contributing to this is the fact that women tend to have inadequate or no life insurance coverage. Another reason contributing to their poverty status is that there is a greater possibility that women will take time away from their careers to raise their children. This reduces the amount of Social Security benefits they will receive after they retire.
One effective way to take care of retirement expenses is through insurance. It will require you to choose permanent or whole life insurance and not a term policy. Permanent and whole life insurance are more expensive than term insurance, but it does provide the advantage of being able to accumulate a cash value that the policy owner can receive as dividends. An important consideration to take into account when purchasing life insurance is inflation. Inflation erodes purchasing power over time, so when choosing how much life insurance to buy this needs to be accounted for to ensure that you purchase sufficient coverage.
