Stay-at-home parents are heroes. On any given day, they act as housekeeper, cook and taxi driver to the whole family. Although their role is precious, it's hard to put a value on the work stay-at-home parents perform as they undertake so many roles. However, it's important to consider this when thinking about purchasing life insurance for stay-at-home parents.
If you're a stay-at-home mum or dad, it's easy to assume that your job doesn't have a monetary value. But in fact stay-at-home parents make a huge contribution that affects their families financially.
If you were suddenly unable to be taxi driver, homemaker and personal assistant to your kids and partner every single day, how much would it cost to employ someone else to do it?
Add up that total and you will arrive at your 'parent salary'.
When buying life insurance, most families cover the breadwinner first. They're the ones earning the money to cover the mortgage, bills, groceries and other payments needed to keep a roof over the family's head.
After taking a family's 'parent salary' into account, you realise that the cost of covering all the responsibilities of a stay-at-home parent can soon add up. For this reason, it is important that you consider whether you require life insurance for the stay-at-home parent as well as the main breadwinner.
There are several different types of life insurance policy you could choose from as a stay-at-home parent. These include level term life insurance and mortgage protection life insurance.
When buying level term life insurance, you can choose how much cover you want and the length of your policy. Level term life insurance may be attractive to young families, one scenario is that you could choose a policy term that covered your family until your children are old enough to support themselves.
Learn more about level term life insurance.
Mortgage protection life insurance is designed to cover the outstanding balance on your repayment mortgage if something unexpected were to happen. This type of cover provides peace of mind that your dependants will be able to keep their home in the event of your death.
Read more on mortgage protection life insurance.
Taking out a joint policy may work out cheaper than buying life insurance separately for both parents. But it's important to remember you can only make one claim per joint policy. The policy will pay out only once in the event of a claim related to either parent and then (dependent upon the policy selected) the policy will normally cease.
Purchasing a separate life insurance policy for each parent offers double the protection and in many cases it also doesn't cost too much more than buying one joint policy. That's why you may wish to consider buying two separate polices to meet your needs when you are exploring your life insurance options.
You can find more helpful information about life insurance by looking at our product guides. Or, you can use our life insurance comparison service to instantly view and compare life insurance quotes in one straightforward search.