If your family member or anyone depends on you financially, Insurance is a must have product in your portfolio. When it comes to insurance, there are various types of policies with varied benefits and features.
Which is the most beneficial policy for you?
How much insurance do you need?
These are few questions that need to be answered before buying a life insurance policy. Buying a life insurance policy is important but what is equally important is to buy adequate insurance.
In this article, we will discuss insurance need analysis by thumb rule method which is easy & quick to calculate. Important point to remember while applying thumb rules is the calculation won’t give you the exact insurance amount you should have. But it will definitely give you a fair idea to start with. Exact insurance depends on various factors like age, dependent needs, goals, liabilities etc. Although these thumb rule methods won’t give exact insurance required but with these methods we can calculate minimum insurance required and get ourselves started.
If you would want to know the exact insurance cover required for yourself, you may get in touch with a financial planner. This will help you to get the answer to this question customised to your needs.
Now let us start with these thumb rules.
1.Based on yearly income
The first thumb rule is based on your yearly income. Ideally, a person should be insured to the extent of 12-20 times of his yearly income. Lesser the age higher the multiple. Here Income refers to net income means income left in hand after reducing your taxes and personal expenses. Please note that we are talking about your personal expenses here and not the family expenses.
This is one of the easiest ways to calculate minimum insurance required. For example, a person aged 25 has yearly income of Rs.5 Lacs and spends Rs.50,000 on his personal expenses throughout the year. He then should be insured to the extent of Rs.90 Lacs (Rs.5 Lacs – 50000 =Rs. 4.50 * 20 times).
Read more:- 7 Reason Why You Should Buy Insurance
2.Based on family’s monthly expenses
The second important thumb rule takes into account your expenses. Based on expense method an individual should be insured to the extent of 80 to 120 times of his family monthly expenses. The underlying assumption here is we need to plan for adequate insurance by making provision for their regular expense if we are not there.
For instance, a person’s family monthly expenses are 50,000 then he should at least have an life insurance cover of Rs. 60,00,000. ( 50,000*120)
3.Income plus expenses method
As per this method, a person should be insured by following both methods – i.e.income method and Expense method. It is a combination of income method and expenses method. In the first part, insurance is calculated as per the income method and in the second part, the amount required to pay off all the loans and financial goals are added to the first part.
For e.g. as per first part income method insurance calculated is Rs.50 Lacs and second method other loans and goals totals to Rs. 30Lacs. In that case total insurance needed is Rs.80 Lacs.
4.Affordability of premium as % of your income
An individual has various responsibilities and priorities. Insurance premium is treated as expenses if it’s paid for pure insurance policies. An individual ideally should pay around 6% of monthly income as insurance premium for self-insurance. As more members of the family are insured he can increase this by 1% per person.
Premium paid for savings and investment plan should not be considered, only pure insurance cost is calculated as part of the limit. Many companies follow this thumb rule while buying insurance under group insurance policy for their employees. Now that you are aware of how to calculate the amount of insurance required, you are ready to take the first step. It is suggested that you use these thumb rules as a guiding principle only. They can provide a framework for you to assess your individual needs. To get a more accurate idea of the amount of insurance required, you may get in touch with a financial advisor. Don’t wait and start investing in an adequate insurance cover by downloading the fintoo app.
