A common challenge that people have with Life Insurance is figuring out how much they need and what type of life insurance to buy.

For personal coverage, the rule of thumb is a multiple of your income to replace your portion of the family income for a number of years plus the total family debt plus an amount to fulfill your education goals for your children. The multiple should be large enough to allow your spouse the time to refocus on the surviving family and put a plan in place for the future.

For business purposes, insurance can also repay debts as well as fund a buy sell agreement between you and your business partner to buy out the others shares, allowing the surviving partner to be in 100% in control of the company and the deceased’s family to be adequately compensated for a pre-arranged price. The death of key employees may cause financial hardship for an organization; insuring that employee with the company listed as the beneficiary is also a good use of Life Insurance.

At The Benefits Edge, we use an industry software service to determine the competitiveness of the various insurers for our clients. We look at the appropriate amount of time for the coverage to remain in place and make recommendation for the type of product that will cover the risk to the business. In this way we provide the right product at the right price.