Is your family underinsured?

Add up the jobs the money has to do and compare the total with the coverage already in place. The DIME method does that in four lines: debts (the mortgage balance, other debts someone would inherit, and $8,000 to $12,000 of final expenses), income (yearly income times the years it must keep coming: about 10 for a spouse who can rebuild, 20 until young kids are grown, 30 to carry a spouse through retirement), mortgage, and education. Subtract group life through work and any policy you own. If the difference is positive, that is the gap, and the calculator on this page prices it as 20-year term.

Rarely, for a family. Basic group life is most often one times annual salary, sometimes two, while a family that depends on your income needs 10 to 20 years of it plus the mortgage. Group coverage also ends when the job does, usually within 31 days, with a short window to convert at much higher rates. Treat it as a bonus on top of a term policy you own, not as the plan.

From the 20-year term table PolicyChat Life publishes (industry estimates, built 2026-09-18, not quotes): $500,000 for a healthy 35-year-old runs about $18 to $28 a month in the best health class and $26 to $40 in the standard class; $1,000,000 at 40 runs about $46 to $72 and $66 to $104. Tobacco roughly doubles those numbers, and rates step up at every birthday. The calculator interpolates your gap and age from that table; the carrier sets the final price when it underwrites.

It is a reasonable starting point for a family that depends on your income, and it usually lands in the right range. A better answer starts from the jobs the money has to do: the mortgage balance, the number of years of income to replace, and any final expenses, then rounds up. Ten times income is too much for a single person with no debts and too little for a parent of young children with a mortgage.

Then you are covered, and the honest next question is whether you are paying more than you need to. A policy bought young in good health is often worth keeping even if it is a little large; a newer, expensive one may be worth re-shopping. Sage can check an existing policy and will sometimes say "keep what you have." Coverage through work still counts only while you have the job.

No. It runs entirely in your browser; nothing is sent or saved while you type. When you click "Send these numbers to Sage," the amounts you see in the preview (recommended coverage, existing coverage, the gap, and the inputs behind them) are passed into the chat as text. No name, ZIP code, phone number, or email is asked for or included.

Only money the family could actually spend on these jobs without giving up something else: an emergency fund or taxable savings, not retirement accounts they would need later or the equity in the house they are trying to keep. The savings field is optional and defaults to zero for that reason.