Life insurance
Life insurance without the hard sell
If someone would struggle financially without your income — or your childcare, which is income — you have a life insurance need. For most households the honest answer is plain term insurance: a large, cheap promise for the years your family depends on you.
What life insurance covers — and what it doesn't
What it covers
- Term life A fixed death benefit for 10, 20, or 30 years at a level premium. The workhorse. Covers the mortgage-and-kids years, then politely expires.
- Whole life Permanent coverage with a savings component. Genuinely useful for a few situations — estate planning, lifelong dependents — and oversold for the rest. We'll say which camp you're in.
- Riders worth knowing Waiver of premium (if you're disabled), child riders, and conversion options that let term become permanent later without a new medical exam.
What it typically doesn't
- Misstatements on the application Carriers can contest claims in the first two years if the application wasn't truthful. We'd rather quote you accurately than cheaply.
- The first years of some no-exam policies Guaranteed-issue policies often pay limited benefits early on. Read (or let us read) the schedule.
A useful starting point is 10–12× the income you're protecting, minus what you've already saved — then we pressure-test that number against your actual mortgage, kids, and plans instead of selling you a slogan.
The premium, honestly
What actually moves the price
No secret handshake here — these are the levers underwriters actually pull, and an honest note about which ones are yours to move.
| Factor | Why it matters | Whose lever is it? |
|---|---|---|
| Age when you lock it in | Term pricing rises every birthday and never comes back down. The boring advice — buy it younger — is correct. | Not up to you |
| Health and tobacco | The medical class you're assigned drives price more than any shopping trick. Quitting smoking re-rates you after 12 months with most carriers. | Partly in your hands |
| Term length and amount | A 30-year term costs more than 20 because it covers more of your riskiest years. Size the term to the youngest child's independence or the mortgage payoff, whichever is longer. | You control this |
| The carrier's underwriting niche | Each life carrier is lenient about something different — build, family history, controlled blood pressure. This is exactly where shopping multiple carriers earns its keep. | You control this |
Sample site: factors are real, but no premium amounts appear here because honest pricing needs your actual details — that's the ten-minute conversation, not the webpage.
Next step
Not sure what you're missing? Start there.
The five-minute coverage checkup finds the gaps in plain English — no premium guessing, no obligation, nothing stored. Then, if you want numbers, we shop your details across our carriers for real.