Don’t forget Social Security! Everyone knows about SS’s retirement safety net but many don’t realize it is also a safety net for surviving children.

That reminds me of a different story.

Since y'all seemed to like the last one:

Different colleague, same decade. I would have been in my mid-forties with kids in elementary school. He was around 8-9 years younger, and he and his SAHM wife had just added a baby to their toddler. He asked how much life insurance I had.

I said term, and as much as they would sell me ($2MM as I recall.) Didn't seem excessive with multiple little kids and a mortgage, and plain-vanilla term insurance is pretty cheap until you reach 50 or thereabouts.

He nodded, but then I added, But they'd only sell me half that much for Mrs sutton, and even that took some fast talking

His eyebrows went up a bit (was I maybe planning to knock her off?), and he asked, Why so much?

I said, Because the day something happens to her is the last day I practice full-time medicine for at least a decade. I have children to raise.

I could just about see the light bulb go off over his head: Never thought of that. And while I never asked him directly, I'm pretty sure he went shopping for term life on Mrs Colleague shortly thereafter.

--sutton
(and both our spouses still alive and well 20+ years later, if you were worried)