Life insurance needs calculator
Credit cards, car loans, personal loans, medical bills, and roughly what a funeral would cost.
Before tax. This is the income your family would need to replace.
How long your family would need that income. Many people use the years until the youngest child finishes school, or until a spouse reaches retirement.
What is left to pay on your home.
What you would want to cover for your children’s schooling or college.
Include group cover through work and any savings you would want counted.
This is an estimate for information only, not advice, an offer of coverage, or an eligibility decision.
What DIME stands for
Debt, Income, Mortgage, Education. It is a checklist rather than a formula: it makes sure the four things that usually bankrupt a surviving household are all on the page, instead of guessing at a round number.
Income replacement is usually the largest piece
Multiplying income by the years it is needed produces a figure that surprises people. That is the point. A household that loses an earner does not lose one year of income, it loses every year until the people depending on it can stand alone.
Group cover through work is not a plan
Employer life insurance usually ends when the job does, is often only one or two times salary, and almost never follows you. It is worth counting, but counting it as the whole answer is how families end up with nothing at the worst possible moment.
This is a starting point, not a quote
DIME ignores inflation, investment returns, Social Security survivor benefits and what a spouse earns. A broker can run those. The value of this number is that it is built from your own figures rather than a rule of thumb.
Common questions
How much life insurance do I actually need?
Enough to clear your debts and mortgage, fund education, and replace your income for as long as your family depends on it. The DIME method adds those four and subtracts what you already have.
Is ten times my salary a good rule?
It is a shortcut that happens to land near the right answer for some households and badly wrong for others. Someone with a large mortgage and young children needs far more; someone with no dependants and no debt may need far less.
Should I count the life insurance from my job?
Count it, but know what it is. It usually ends when the job ends and is rarely enough on its own, so most people treat it as a layer rather than the policy.
Does term or whole life change the number?
No. This figure is how much cover you need. Which kind of policy to buy is a separate question about budget and how long you need the cover to last.