When buying life insurance most people will ask themselves, "How much life insurance do I need?"

For obvious reasons, having too little life insurance is undesirable. It's also undesirable to have too much; it will only cause your insurance premiums to be needlessly high. So before you buy, review your needs and what it is you want your coverage to achieve and go from there. For example, do you want to have enough coverage that'll:

  • Pay your funeral arrangements?
  • Pay the outstanding balance owing on a mortgage and other debts?
  • Help your family offset the loss of your income? For how long?
  • Contribute to the future education of your children?
  • Leave something "extra" to your parents or other family members?
  • Leave a legacy with a charity?
  • A combination of all or part of the above?
Knowing what you would like to accomplish with your life insurance policy will help you determine how much life insurance you need to buy.

A good starting point when you are doing your preliminary quote comparisons, is to have an amount of life insurance coverage that equals five to 10 times your annual, before-tax income.

Price may also be a consideration. Once you have an idea of how much life insurance you need, compare life insurance quotes for term life insurance (it's the most affordable) to see how much it may cost. It's easy to do, will take you less than a minute, and can be done online at Kanetix.ca.

Life insurance shopping trends

Last year, Kanetix.ca shoppers obtained quotes for the following life insurance policy face values.

For individuals comparing life insurance quotes:

  • 15% were for face values under $100,000
  • 26% were for policies that ranged from $100,000 to $200,000
  • 41% were for policies that ranged from $250,000 up to $500,000
  • 14% were for policies ranged from $500,000 up to $1 million
  • 4% were for policies that were over a $1 million
For couples (who compared joint life insurance quotes):
  • 7% were for face values under $100,000
  • 20% were for policies that ranged from $100,000 to $200,000
  • 51% were for policies that ranged from $250,000 up to $500,000
  • 19% were for policies ranged from $500,000 up to $1 million
  • 4% were for policies that were over a $1 million
Visitors to Kanetix.ca can get life insurance quotes for policies ranging from $50,000 to $2 million. There is a wide variety of term life insurance products available too: Term 10 life insurance, Term 20 life insurance, Term 30 life insurance and the Term to 100 policy. All offer premiums guaranteed not to increase during the term of the policy, an appealing feature for many life insurance shoppers.

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