The short answer: start with the years your family would need your income covered, add the mortgage and debts, add final costs, then subtract savings and coverage you already have. What is left is the gap, and the gap is your starting number. It is a starting number, not advice, and an advisor sizes it for real.
Step 1: what would your family need?
- Your income, for as long as it is needed. Think about the monthly household bills (housing, food, cars, insurance, the kids) and how many years someone would need to cover them. Your youngest child's age is a big clue: it sets how many years the kids need carrying.
- The mortgage. Your family may want to keep the house without your paycheck. The balance left is a rough figure, and rough is fine.
- Other debts. Anything your family would otherwise have to keep paying.
- Final costs. Funeral, burial and end-of-life costs, so nobody has to scramble.
Step 2: what is already there?
- Cash savings. Money that could be spent next month, not retirement accounts.
- Your partner's income. What keeps coming in without you.
- Coverage you already have. A policy of your own, and coverage through work. Count work coverage carefully: it usually ends when the job does. Our article Is the life insurance through your job enough? explains why.
Step 3: the gap is the number
Subtract step 2 from step 1. That gap is what a policy of your own should cover. If the gap is zero, that is a real answer too: nobody may be waiting on your paycheck, and the question becomes final costs or what you want to leave, not income.
You do not have to do the arithmetic by hand. The Month After on our life page lets you slide in your take-home pay, bills, savings and mortgage, and shows how many months your household could run without you. It does not ask for your phone number.
Your number moves over time
The need is not one number for life. It rises when you take on a mortgage or have a child, and it falls as the mortgage gets paid off and the youngest finishes school. Some needs, like final costs, never go away. That is why many families pair a term policy sized for the years of big need with a small permanent policy for the floor. Life Map lets you drop your own life events on a timeline and watch the need change shape. For the difference between the two kinds of policy, see coverage and strategies on our life page.
Start with what you are protecting
Numbers come easier once you know the goal. Keep the house? Keep the kids' life the same? Give your spouse time to breathe? Cover final costs so nobody scrambles? Leave a legacy? Purpose Cards reads back what you are really trying to protect, and who.
Picture it
You pick a round number because it sounds like a lot. Years later your family is left with a policy that pays off part of the mortgage, while the monthly bills keep arriving on the 1st and the youngest still has years of school ahead.
Now picture the other version. You added up the years your income was needed, the mortgage and final costs, and subtracted savings and what you already had. The policy you bought was sized to that gap. The bills arrive on the 1st, and this time, so does the money.
This is general education, not financial advice and not a guarantee of coverage. Approval, pricing and policy terms depend on the carrier, your state and underwriting.