You are about to share your life with someone else. To prepare for this extra responsibility, you might like to consider life assurance to protect your family, mortgage or business against the risk of your death. It is a type of insurance that pays out a lump sum to a predetermined beneficiary if death occurs before the expiry of the policy. The basic aim of it is to help your family or dependants manage financially after your death. Experience suggests that you should insure your life to produce an income equivalent of two thirds of your current earnings, but with the potential for increases to cope with inflation.
Term assurance can provide high levels of monetary cover at the least expense.
Term assurance allows you to separate savings from protection - using a term policy can enable the two issues to be tackled separately. You will also need to consider the following factors to determine the level of life assurance you need to enable your family to maintain its standard of living following the loss of a main income provider. Although there is a tendency to assume that a young widow or widower will remarry, this is not always the case. In the event that your partner does not choose to remarry, life cover may be the only source of finance for new and additional expenses such as childminding. Tertiary education may mean you are contributing to their upkeep well beyond this age.