Life / critical illness insurance - what do you spend?

[Haypanky]

How much do you spend on life / critical illness cover a month? Just interested because the quotes we're being given by an independent financial adviser are higher than I expected, for a higher level of cover than I think we need. Interested to know if I'm being tight... Not keen on spending +£100 a month on insurance when we have debts and high costs eg childcare at this time...

Depends on your own personal objectives, circumstances and lifestyle factors. If you're a smoker you'll pay double the amount of a non-smoker straight off, and medical issues or unhealthy lifestyle will only compound this.

Life cover on its own is really quite cheap, it's the Critical Illness cover that costs so much more..... because statistically you are 4 x more likely to make a claim on the policy.

How much cover do you think you need, and how much does your IFA recommend you need?

Got it in 2001 at £23 a month for a mortgage protection of £104k. No health concerns reported then.

We pay £31 a month on joint life insurance.

Then we pay £21 each (£42 total) for income protection insurance.

The life insurance covers £400,000.

The income protection covers £1,250 and has a year to wait before claiming (so would need to cover short term with our emergency fund) but after that would pay until return to work or retirement.

We spend about £2,500 a month so I used that to figure out the coverage amounts. £400,000 is about half the outgoings for 25 years, and the income protection is half the outgoings too. My reasoning was it's like the insurance is a minimal substitute for the one parent's financial contribution.

My DH and I have similar earning power, so that's a consideration - probably want to cover a higher earner more.

I bought all through price comparison websites. Might be worth using to play around with some numbers and get an idea of costs, sounds like your broker isn't being great.

I can recommend income protection. Critical illness cover only covers you for a fixed list of illnesses, whereas income protection covers you for any illness which leaves you unable to do your job.

I’m off work long term with an illness which would not be covered under a critical illness policy. Fortunately a few years ago when I was fit and well I bought an income protection policy and that’s now paying out.

There's a fair few apps now that will give you a good steer on what you might need - most free! www.multiply.ai ... does all the calculations for you - they dont try to sell you products either 🙏