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I’m in my 30s and have just started a family, but do I need life insurance?

When you should take out life insurance is more marked by what stage you’re at in your life, rather than what age you are. While life insurance will usually be cheaper the younger you take out a policy, many don't really think about it until they have children.

One of those life stages is having children or other people who depend on your income. Family life insurance is there to provide financial support should the worst happen – you may want to ensure your family has enough to get back, as well as pay off any debts you have such as a mortgage - for this reason alone, it is advisable to look into life insurance even if you are single and don't have children. 

That average cost of life insurance increases with every age bracket from then on, so again the advice rings true: buying when you’re young will save you money, even if you’re paying for longer.

Generally speaking, our thirties are when debts are great and disposable income small. It’s when most people take out a mortgage, start a family and are climbing a career ladder. But, it’s also when life insurance prices aren’t yet prohibitively expensive, so if you’re young and have recently started a family there’s no better, nor more sensible time to take out a policy.

Related guides

Endowment Policies

Endowments are an old-fashioned type of investment, originally created to pay off mortgages. As pay outs from life policies are tax free, the idea was to build investments within the policy for the tax benefit.This was the only tax-free investment you could make back in the 80s, but since then ISAs have evolved and replaced endowments. As a mortgage repayment vehicle they failed, as the expectations of investment growth in the 80s (high inflation=higher investment returns) did not continue into the late 90s and beyond, making them an unreliable and expensive product.No one should now be buying an endowment. It ties up your savings and is an expensive form of life insurance. The usual alternative is to have separate life insurance and separate ISA savings.

How Insurers Calculate Premiums

Ever wondered why your life insurance policy costs as much as it does? Or why the cost of your existing policy might be changing?We’ll go through the kinds of things that insurance providers take into account when quoting life insurance policies they offer, and in doing so show you how you might be able to keep costs down wherever possible.

How Life Insurance Could Help Your Child Access Higher Education

When you’re raising children and looking out for what’s best for them, it’s not unusual to become so focused on the present that the future is completely overlooked. It’s perfectly understandable. After all, there’s no day off when it comes to being a parent, and it can be challenging enough at times to reach the end of another hectic week, let alone take the time to stop and consider the future. For this reason, many parents consider looking into family life insurance policies to explore their options. However, finding the right protection for a family’s future can easily be forgotten about in the day-to-day activities of raising your kids. Like most things in life that matter, the future can arrive quickly, and if you haven’t set plans to accommodate the years ahead, it can be a rude awakening when it arrives. And when it comes to how that future affects your own children, it’s vital to set the road ahead today and provide them with the best possible guidance to form their own paths in years to come. For the majority of parents, that first hurdle can come in the form of finding ways for their kids to gain access to higher education opportunities in the future.