Enough coverage is the amount that lets the people who depend on you keep the house, eat, and finish school if your paycheck stops. It is not a multiple you saw in an ad.

Ten times income is a starting sketch. For many families with a mortgage and young kids it is short. Run the obligations, subtract what you already have, then buy a term that lasts as long as the need. 

Add the bills that would still exist

The DIME stack is the cleanest way to do that.

Debt. Cars, cards, student loans, final expenses. Leave the mortgage out of this line; it has its own.

Income. Years your people would still need a check, times the income they would actually lose. If a spouse keeps earning, replace the gap, not the whole household budget twice. A common window is until the youngest is done with high school or college. Twenty years of $80,000 is $1.6 million. Ten years of a $40,000 gap is $400,000. Those are different lives. 

Mortgage. The payoff balance, if you want the house free and clear. If the survivor would sell, you need less here and more in cash for the move.

Education. What you would actually fund. Public in-state and private are not the same line item. A rough $100,000 to $150,000 per child is a placeholder, not a tuition contract.

Add those four. Then subtract liquid savings you would allow to be spent on these items, and subtract life insurance you already have, including group term at work.

Group coverage is usually one or two times salary and disappears if you leave the job. Treat it as a bonus layer, not the plan.

A worked pass

Say you earn $85,000. Spouse earns $40,000. Two kids, youngest is six. Mortgage $340,000. Other debt $28,000. You want twelve years of the $85,000 until the youngest is out of high school, plus $250,000 for school.

Debt $28,000 + income $1,020,000 + mortgage $340,000 + school $250,000 = about $1.64 million. Minus $50,000 in savings and $85,000 of group term. You are shopping for roughly $1.5 million of individual term. The 10× rule would have said $850,000. That gap is the house and the diplomas. 

A stay-at-home parent is not a zero. Child care, after-school, and the unpaid work have a replacement cost. Price that like a job and insure it. The 10×-income rule assigns them nothing. That is a math error, not thrift.

How long the term should run

Match the calendar, not a product shelf. If the youngest is 3 and you want coverage through college, a 20-year term bought at 35 ends when you are 55 and the kid is 23. A 10-year term on a 30-year mortgage leaves the last two decades naked. A 30-year term on a need that dies in 12 years is paying for years you may not need.

You can ladder: a larger 20-year policy for peak dependency and a smaller 30-year policy that covers the mortgage tail. Two applications, two underwritings. Still cheaper than guessing high on one permanent policy you did not want.

What the premium is actually doing

Term is cheap while you are healthy and young because most policies never pay. A healthy 35-year-old non-smoker often pays on the order of $60 to $90 a month for $2 million of 20-year term; $500,000 of 20-year term for a healthy 40-year-old commonly sits around $30 to $50 a month depending on sex and class. Smokers pay a multiple of that. Wait a decade and the same face amount costs more for the rest of the term. 

People underinsure because the death number looks large next to the grocery bill. Compare it to the years of rent and tuition it is replacing. The premium is the small number.

What to leave out of the face amount

Do not inflate the policy to “invest” the difference. That is a different product. Do not buy a tiny policy to cover only the funeral if someone else is on the mortgage with you. Do not assume Social Security survivor benefits will close a $1 million hole; they help, they do not finish the math.

If you have no dependents, no co-signed debt, and enough cash for burial, you may need little or none. Insurable interest still requires someone who would suffer a financial loss. A policy on a child for “future insurability” is a separate, smaller decision.

A number you can live with

Write four figures: debts, years of income gap, mortgage, school. Subtract savings and existing coverage. Round to a face amount the carrier actually sells. Pick a term that outlasts the youngest dependency or the loan, whichever is longer.

Recheck after a baby, a house, a divorce, or a job that kills the group policy. The right amount is the one that makes the survivor’s budget work without a fire sale. Everything else is a rule of thumb that got lucky.