Calculating life insurance needs w/ two high earners

So I’ve seen the general wisdom is 10x gross salary for life insurance. My gross salary with bonus is $215k, husband’s is $285k. We have one child. We just bought a new house, so our biggest concern right now is our new mortgage. Right now I applied for $1M in 25 year term life insurance for each of us. The idea behind the $1M is if either of us passed, we could use that money to pay off the mortgage. Without a mortgage, either of us could easily afford household and childcare expenses on our individual salaries. Besides a mortgage, we have no debts and live well below our means.

We’d like a second child, so the idea behind the 25 year is by the time we’re 25 years out, our children will be grown and our retirement fully funded.

Am I looking at this wrong? 10x our salaries would put us well over $1M each. We also each get 2x salary in basic life insurance through our employers, but I’m not relying on that as I know employment changes.

submitted by /u/SphinxBear
[comments]

See also  Schwab Launches 3 Bond Ladder Strategies