OK morbid topic alert!  We’ll keep this one brief.

So you know what we’ve said about the purpose of term insurance (If you don’t know what we said, read about it here): it’s built to replace your income should you pass away.  How much income do your kids make that your household needs?  Easy: nothing (I hope)

There are two key things you need to worry about relating to insurance and your children:

• If your child pass away unexpectedly you’ll have to deal with final expenses and obviously take some time off to grieve.
• If your child gets critically ill with cancer or another critical illness then you will need to be ready for a fight, the fight for your child’s life. That fight will need time, time away from work.  That fight will also need money, money to travel, money to get special treatments for your child, money to buy drugs that aren’t covered by provincial health or your benefits plan at work.

Usually, we look to ensure that children get about $25,000 of coverage for both Life Insurance and Critical Illness.  If you can get this covered through work or as a rider on your own life insurance, great!  Just get it done, talk to your workplace benefits person, talk to your advisor, do what you need to do.  To give you a costing benchmark, we have a solution that covers both these requirements for about $20 per month per child (if your child meets certain basic requirements).

This all assumes that you would get paid leave from work or at least that you would not lose any income (e.g. you are a single income family).  Otherwise, you may want to adjust that coverage amount up accordingly.

This is your money, not your advisor’s money, not mine.  It’s your advisor’s and my responsibility to inform you.  It’s your decision in the end.