Let’s see… his role in our family is to be the breadwinner. My role is to raise the children and to maintain a clean and safe home environment for all of the family members. We have no life insurance on either my husband or me. It seems to me that for the sake of our children and my financial peace of mind we should insure my husband’s life, even though I shudder at the thought of something happening that makes us smart to have done so.
Insurance is a device for reducing the risk of something bad happening, something you really, really don’t want to happen and would rather not even consider could ever happen. But as a responsible parent and for the sake of the children, someone has to make sure that no matter what happens they will not suffer financial deprivation. The loss of their father would be horrible enough. Being destitute would make matters so much worse.
The main deterrent to purchasing life insurance is that money is tight enough as it is without taking on another expense. With two pre-schoolers and a house to care for, paying for something I pray would never be of use is a difficult step to convince myself to take. Much less try and talk my husband into agreeing to. The solution would seem to be term life insurance. It was developed to provide temporary life insurance protection on a limited budget. Since term insurance can be purchased in large amounts for a relatively small initial premium, it is well suited for short-range goals. Like for the child raising years until they can take responsibility for their own financial well being.
The responsible thing to do for the woman in this situation is to broach the subject with the husband and get a term life insurance quote to see what is the immediate impact on the finances. The inconsiderate thing to do would be to do nothing.