TOP REASONS STAY AT HOME MOMS AND PARENTS NEED LIFE INSURANCE TOO
Term life insurance is an important document that every parent needs to protect their children. For many, term life insurance is about replacing an income. However, term policies are important for stay at home parents too. Why do stay at home parents need life insurance too?
DOCUMENTS EVERY PARENT NEEDS TO PROTECT THEIR CHILDREN
As an estate planning attorney AND a parent, I believe that every parent needs at least these 4 documents before they have children:
- Last Will and Testament with guardian appointed
- Power of Attorney for Property
- Healthcare Representative or Power of Attorney for Healthcare
- Term Life Insurance
If you are tempted to skip any of those documents as unnecessary for you, DON’T.
Specifically, you might be tempted to skip term life insurance for that stay at home mom or parent. However, you would still be mistaken.
THE VALUE OF STAY AT HOME PARENTS
Every day, stay at home parents are invaluable members of households, the workforce, and the global economy in general.
Many suggest that the effect of a stay at home parent is to actually boost the working parent’s salary due to increased flexibility and support.
Further, some hypothesize that the cost of replacing a stay at home spouse would exceed $162,000 per year.
Stay at home spouses take a wide and varied role, and it would cost quite a bit to replace a stay at home spouse. Therefore, term life insurance is important to replace the value of stay at home spouse just as much as the working spouse.
If you don’t already know or believe that, here are my top 6+ reasons why stay at home moms and stay at home parents MUST HAVE a term life insurance policy.
STAY AT HOME MOMS NEED LIFE INSURANCE TOO
Childcare Costs
When I went back to work, the cost of childcare for my 2 small children was more than 50% of my take home pay. When I had my 3rd child, the cost of childcare nearly matched my take home pay, and it was cheaper for us to hire a nanny than continue to pay for daycare.
While, for me, working outside the home is the right decision, the cost of childcare is not to be taken lightly. With childcare costs easily creeping up on $200 and $300 per week for group care, the loss of a stay at home parent could be a huge hit to your monthly budget.
Care.com estimates the national average for in-home nanny care for 2 children at $30,420 per year. More children = higher cost.
Don’t leave your family in a situation where you not only lose your stay at home spouse but you also lose the entirety of your income. Make a plan to have term life insurance for your stay at home parent and avoid the devastating blow of childcare costs.
Household Chores
Even if you don’t have preschool aged children, your stay at home spouse likely lightens the load of household chores.
Have you ever noticed how the light bulbs magically never fade, the towels never mold, and the kids always have clean clothes to wear?
Have you noticed that your refrigerator has fresh food, your bills are paid, and last night’s dinner dishes have disappeared?
If you don’t already have a personal chef, handyman, personal assistant, and maid, then your stay at home spouse probably takes care of a fair amount of those daily household tasks. Consider for a moment how much weekly cleaning, a laundry service, a chef, or assistant would cost you.
Even if you only replaced a few of those tasks with services, subscriptions, or even takeout, your budget would likely take a hit. Or, if you took on all of those tasks yourself, consider what would happen to your physical and mental health.
Consider keeping term life insurance for your stay at home spouse to make sure that you can keep household tasks under control if the worst should happen.
In-home Support
I don’t know about you, but it is all I can do at the end of the day to get my kids, bathed, pajamad, snuggled, and into bed. Add checking homework, preparing clothing for the next day, and picking up the toys strewn around the house, and I need an extra set of hands.
Without my husband’s help, I would not be able to complete all of the daily parenting tasks alone for long.
Make sure that your stay at home spouse has term life insurance to help cover in-home help if something happens to him or her.
Funeral and Burial Costs
Maybe you are confident that you can handle the day to day tasks of your house and your children. Maybe you have a great and supportive family nearby who can help pick up the slack.
However, I can tell you from watching it time and again that paying for a funeral, burial, interment, and memorial markers is no fun.
To add insult to injury, when you are grieving a loved one, the cost of giving them a dignified send off can be astronomical. Memorial services, caskets, flyers, publications, gifts to officiants, opening and closing the burial site, plots, urns, and more all cost thousands upon thousands of dollars.
In 2021, the average funeral costs between $7,000 and $9,000. Money you would rather put toward college education, childcare, or time off.
Even if you are not concerned about the cost of replacing in home support and child care, term life insurance is extremely important to cover burial and funeral costs for the stay at home spouse.
Ease
If the worst happened, and you lost your stay at home spouse, wouldn’t knowing that you didn’t have to worry about finances help ease your mind?
Money would just be one less thing to worry about in that terrible situation.
Consider purchasing term life insurance for your stay at home spouse just to make your life easier.
Mourning Period
Most employers are likely to give you a bereavement period for the loss of a spouse. But is it paid? How long could you go without your paycheck?
What if you could give yourself a little more time to adjust to the changes in your home.
Term life insurance, even for stay at home spouses, can give the surviving spouse the margin to stay home a little while longer –to adjust a little while longer.
For many, the loss of a young spouse is so devastating that a return to work and normalcy doesn’t happen for a loooong time. Don’t leave your family in a delicate financial situation; purchase a simple term policy for your stay at home spouse.
TERM LIFE INSURANCE FOR STAY AT HOME MOMS AND PARENTS
Parents take all sorts of steps to protect their children: child locks, car seats, and cutting grapes. You would do anything to keep your children safe and protected.
While we often talk about term life insurance as something that replaces income, consider that it is something that actually replaces value. Your stay at home spouse is incredibly valuable to the success of your household.
The loss of their help, emotional support, childcare, and more could be devastating to your family finances. Further, with the rising costs of funerals and burial, your family would have yet another cost eating into the family finances.
Consider a simple and inexpensive term life insurance policy for your stay at home spouse today.
For more resources about term life insurance and stay at home parents, check this out.