Life Insurance for Stay at Home Parents
Stay-at-home parents provide valuable services that should be covered by life insurance. You would be surprised at how many couples overlook the importance of life insurance coverage for a stay- at- home parent. They understand the importance of what they do but they don’t think to put a dollar figure on the actual services that they provide.
Let’s say for instance that you are a stay-at- home parent that handles the domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning, laundry and childcare. You pretty much do all of the duties related to maintaining the household. How much do you think all of these services would cost if they needed to be outsourced?
How Much are Your Services Worth? – According to Salary.com’s 2014 survey, a stay-at-home mom’s services would be worth $118,905 per year. They break down that figure into 10 tasks and actually include overtime! The base salary they computed was $38,126 (40 hours per week) with overtime adding $80,779 (56.5 hours per week). Not every stay-at-home parent will have the same workload or tasks, so Salary.com has created a calculator here that allows you to calculate your own salary based on your personal situation. But let’s say that your personal salary number comes in at even half of the amount listed above and you are providing all or most of the household domestic services until your children reach high school. Outsourcing most of those tasks could require hundreds of thousands of dollars over that time period. You could protect that with an affordable term policy so that your surviving family members could continue to maintain the standard of living that you would want them to have.
Conclusion – The point of this post is to help you understand that in life insurance planning it is important to put a dollar value on the services provided by a stay-at-home parent. If a stay-at-home parent were to pass unexpectedly, it could be an added financial burden on the surviving parent. The amount of coverage doesn’t have to equal the working parent’s coverage but in most cases it should be at least half that amount. You will be surprised at how affordable this coverage can be.
About us
Archstone Insurance Services, LLC is an independent agency that shops over 40 of the top life insurance carriers to provide huge savings on life insurance coverage for our clients. We are happy to answer any questions you might have about any of the insurance products we offer, your planning needs or your existing coverage. Feel free to call us directly at (888) 687-9444 or email us at info@archstoneagency.com. You can also visit our website at www.archstoneinsurance.com.
