Family protection

Life insurance needs calculator

A life insurance needs calculator answers one question: if you died tomorrow, how big a check would your family need to be okay? Rules of thumb ("10× your income") skip the things that decide the real number — taxes on the invested payout, market growth, inflation, how many years your family needs support, and what they'd get from Social Security and savings. Coastline computes it the honest way: the invested lump sum that actually funds your family's spending, year by year, with full tax math.

$1,280,000 to fund $60,000/yr for 30 years

That's the invested lump sum a surviving family needs to spend $60,000 a year (after tax, in today's dollars) for 30 years — before subtracting what you already have. Your coverage gap = this number − savings − other support.

The lump sum, by family spending level

Invested at 6% nominal with 3% inflation, taxed as it's drawn — the amount that funds each spending level for 30 years:

Survivor's after-tax spending → lump sum required (30 years, today's $)
Family spending	Per month	Lump sum needed
$40,000/yr	$3,333/mo	$850,000
$60,000/yr	$5,000/mo	$1,280,000
$80,000/yr	$6,667/mo	$1,730,000
$100,000/yr	$8,333/mo	$2,180,000

Longer horizons cost more, and other income helps: funding $60,000/yr for 50 years takes about $1,660,000 — but with $24,000/yr of Social Security arriving at 67, it drops to roughly $1,480,000. Survivor benefits (which can start much earlier for a spouse caring for children) shrink the number further.

Your actual coverage gap

The insurance you need is not the lump sum — it's the gap:

Start with the lump sum for your family's spending and horizon (table above, or run your exact numbers).
Subtract what you already have: investments, savings, existing coverage through work, and a surviving partner's income.
Subtract Social Security survivor benefits. A surviving spouse caring for children under 16 — and the children themselves — typically qualify for meaningful monthly benefits; check your ssa.gov statement.
Add one-time needs: paying off the mortgage, college funding, final expenses.

For most working families the result points to term life insurance — it's pure coverage for the years the gap exists (until the kids launch and savings compound), and it costs a small fraction of permanent policies for the same death benefit.

Why the thumb rules miss

"10× income" ignores that a $60,000/yr family and an identical-income family spending $100,000/yr need utterly different amounts ($1,280,000 vs $2,180,000 here); it ignores taxes on the drawdown, inflation over decades, and the survivor benefits that can offset a third of the need. The honest calculation is a retirement projection run for your survivors — which is exactly what Coastline does: model your household, remove your income, add the payout, and see whether the plan survives.

Why Coastline's version is different

Most free calculators hand you a single headline number with the assumptions hidden. Coastline is built the opposite way:

Real tax math, not a flat rate. It applies federal and state income tax, long-term capital-gains rules, and account-by-account treatment (taxable, traditional, Roth) — in both your working years and retirement.
The whole journey. It models accumulation (saving and investing) and drawdown (spending it down), so you see how the plan connects end to end, not just one half.
The math is shown. Every figure has a click-through breakdown of how it was computed — a level of transparency even paid tools rarely expose.
US and Canada. It natively handles Canadian plans (RRSP, TFSA, CPP, OAS) alongside US accounts, which most calculators ignore.
Free, no signup. No account, no email, no account-linking. Your inputs run the projection and are then discarded.

Educational, not insurance or financial advice. Figures assume the payout is invested at 6% nominal (3% inflation) and drawn with real tax math for a single filer in a no-income-tax state; life insurance death benefits themselves are generally income-tax-free. Model your own family's numbers, and confirm coverage decisions with a licensed professional.

Run this with your real numbers

Model your family without your income and with the payout invested — the projection shows whether the plan survives, year by year.

Open the free calculator →

Common questions

How much life insurance do I need?

Enough to close your family's gap: the invested lump sum that funds their spending for the years they need support, minus existing savings, work coverage, a partner's income, and Social Security survivor benefits, plus one-time needs like the mortgage. Funding $60,000/yr for 30 years takes roughly $1,280,000 before those subtractions.

Is 10 times my income enough life insurance?

It’s a crude starting point. The real number depends on your family’s spending (not your income), the years of support needed, taxes on the invested payout, inflation, and offsetting benefits — which is why identical incomes can need very different coverage. A projection of your actual household beats any multiplier.

Do Social Security survivor benefits reduce how much insurance I need?

Substantially. A surviving spouse caring for children under 16, and the children themselves, typically qualify for monthly benefits — in this page’s example, $24,000/yr of benefits cuts the 50-year lump sum by about $180,000. Check your ssa.gov statement for your family’s figures.

Should I buy term or whole life insurance?

For closing an income-replacement gap, term insurance is what the math usually points to: it covers exactly the years the gap exists at a small fraction of the cost of permanent policies, freeing the difference to be invested. Permanent insurance serves narrower estate and business purposes — talk to a licensed professional about your situation.