Agree with term insurance for parents of young children.

While most other insurance is purchased in order to ameliorate unexpected big expenses - wrecking the car, burning up the kitchen - life insurance's chief justification is the fulfilling of promises made but not yet kept: a stable home atmosphere, a college education.

Term insurance is simply an annual bet: I bet a few hundred dollars that I'm going to die in the next year; the insurance company bets me a few hundred thousand that I won't. Next year, we bet again.

The nice thing about term is it's cheapest when you need it the most i.e. in your thirties, which typically are when the kids are small and at their most needy. The premiums get more expensive in your forties, and at age fifty it's suddenly, Holy smoke, where'd the extra zero come from? But at that point, all you need to cover are the final few years of college tuition - which you should have already saved anyway.

I did comment once to one of my younger partners that while high amount of term coverage was available to me, I was having a harder time insuring Spouse, a SAHM, for the same amount. He asked, Why does she need that much, anyway? I said, Because the day anything happens to Spouse is the last day I practice medicine full-time: I have children to raise.

I think I saw a light bulb go on over his head, and the insurance broker made another sale

-- sutton
happy to report all those term premiums of 20-30 years ago were a dead loss - easily my least successful investment