When you insure your car and your home, do you insure it for the full value?   If your car was totalled would you want the insurance company to give you a full reimbursement?

The answer is yes.  With most type of insurance we want to provide ourselves or our family the appropriate amount of coverage to replace the loss.  When we think about life insurance protection, most people don’t think about it that way.  They are often times looking to spend as little as possible and not concerned with their full replacement value.  Is there anything more important to your family than you?  Don’t they rely on you financially, emotionally, etc?

We try and get our clients to focus on that and get to as close to full replacement value as possible.   How do we measure that?  It is hard to measure emotional value and other types of value to the family other than monetarily.   Monetarily you need to figure out the amount of income that would be lost over working years with some type of inflationary factor worked in.  Other benefits that would be lost need to be factored in like medical benefits, etc.  Take a look at your own situation and whether you have the appropriate amount of life insurance in place.  I doubt the car is of more value than you are to your family.