This article was written prior to 15 March 2021, before the launch of the new Financial Advice Regime, and was published for information purposes only. It is not being actively promoted by Dollar Insurance. Dollar Insurance does not provide financial advice about the suitability of their products and cannot take into account your personal situation or goals. Before you decide to take out a Dollar Insurance Policy, you should read the relevant Policy Wording document which contains the terms, conditions, and exclusions of the Policy, and seek independent financial advice, if required, to ensure the insurance policy is suitable for you.

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Life insurance might be the last thing on a busy parent’s mind. It doesn’t matter if your kids are still in diapers or learning to drive—there’s just so much to do from sunup to sundown! When you do get a bit of downtime, you probably want to spend it with the little ones, not comparing hard-to-understand life insurance policies.

Or, maybe you’ve written off life cover as an unnecessary expense. Why pay for something you’ll probably never use, right? Besides, just thinking about not being there for your family can be tough. Buying life insurance can bring up all sorts of thoughts and emotions you’d might not want right now.

The good news is, you’re not alone. These are all pretty common reasons why parents don’t get life cover. 

Let’s take a look at why parents might want to have life insurance.

What life insurance can do for families

If you’ve already read our post on life insurance, then you might already have an idea of what it’s for. Basically, it boils down to this: Life is unpredictable. A life insurance policy could help your family get back on their feet if the absolute worst happened to you.

The mortgage or rent, car payments, groceries, utilities, school fees… your family probably relies on you to help pay these bills now. But if you weren’t able or around to do this, what would they do? These bills don’t stop when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness or passes away.

That’s where life insurance comes in. If you find out you have a terminal illness or die unexpectedly, your policy could give your family money to help cushion the financial blow. Hopefully neither happens to you or your partner, but it might be nice to have that peace of mind, just in case. 

Do both parents need to be covered?

You’re on board with getting life insurance. Now comes the next question: Do me and my partner both need a policy? That answer is up to you in the end, but there are some things you might want to consider when making your decision.

A lot of parents see the wisdom in insuring their family’s main breadwinner. After all, the household probably wouldn’t function without their paycheque. But the same might be true for a parent that works part-time or casually. If their pay helps make ends meet, tops up the savings account or just makes things a little easier, then maybe they should get life insurance, too.

But what about a stay-at-home parent? Many people assume that no paycheque = no life insurance, but that might not be the case. Stay-at-home parents do a lot of work around the house that would be expensive to hire someone else to do. Childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry, school runs, homework help… imagine how much it would cost if you had to pay someone to do all that!

For this reason, it might make sense for families to cover stay-at-home parents, too. The money from their insurance benefit could help pay for a regular babysitter, public transportation or a pair of helping hands when life get really busy.

Making life insurance simple

Finally ticking life insurance off the list

Even if you’re ready to get life cover, you might still be putting off buying a policy. You may have even tried before, but were put off by long applications, confusing insurance terms or expensive payments. 

Organising life insurance may not be the most exciting way to spend an afternoon, but it may not be as hard as you think. Many insurers allow you to organise your cover over the phone - you generally answer a few heatlh and lifestyle questions as part of your application and depending on your answers to those, could be covered after the call!

If you need some help understanding some of the insurance jargon out there, our website has a glossary of insurance terms that may help. Plus, this blog also does its bit to demystify life insurance! To top it all off, we have a great customer support team that can help, too.

About the author: Dollar Insurance is all about making insurance as painless as possible, with easy to get funeral cover, for just $1 a day.  

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is of a general nature only and does not take into account your personal situation or goals. You should consider whether the information is appropriate to your needs and seek independent financial advice, if required, to ensure an insurance product is suitable for you.

Any product information is correct at the time this article was published. For current product information, please visit the Dollar Insurance website.