Ask how much life insurance you need and you will be told a multiple of your salary. Ten times is the usual answer. Sometimes eight, sometimes twelve.
That number is a sales heuristic. It is quick, it is roughly the right order of magnitude for a lot of households, and it is not a calculation — it takes no account of what you owe, how old your children are, what your partner earns, or what the government would already pay your family. Two people on identical salaries can need very different amounts, and occasionally one of them needs none at all.
What follows is the arithmetic instead. It applies to the United States, and the survivor benefit figures below come from the Social Security Administration.
Why a multiple of income is not a calculation
The multiple answers a different question from the one you are asking. It asks "how much income is being lost", which is only the first of four things that matter.
Consider two people earning the same. One rents, has no children, and a partner who earns more than they do. The other has a mortgage with eighteen years to run, two children under ten, and a partner who left work to look after them. The multiple gives them the same answer. Their actual need is not remotely the same, and for the first person it may genuinely be close to zero.
Life insurance exists to move a loss your household could not absorb onto an insurer who can. So the number you are looking for is not your income. It is the shortfall your household would face, which means you have to work out both what disappears and what arrives.
What Social Security actually pays your survivors
This is the part almost every calculator skips, and it is frequently the largest single offset.
If you have worked and paid Social Security taxes, your family may be eligible for survivor benefits (opens in a new tab) when you die. Who qualifies:
- A surviving spouse, generally from age 60 — or 50 to 59 with a disability — provided the marriage lasted at least nine months and they did not remarry before 60 (50 with a disability).
- An ex-spouse, where the marriage lasted at least 10 years.
- Children, if unmarried and aged 17 or younger, or 18 to 19 and in school full time, or any age if a disability began before their 22nd birthday.
- Dependent parents aged 62 or over who you were financially supporting.
And the crucial exception to the age rule: a surviving spouse may be eligible regardless of age or length of marriage if they are caring for a child of the person who died. Read that exception carefully, though, because it has its own expiry date, and it is not the one most people assume. Under 20 CFR § 404.341 (opens in a new tab), that payment ends once there is no longer a child under age 16 — or a disabled child — entitled on the record.
What they get, per SSA (opens in a new tab):
| Survivor | Payment |
|---|---|
| Spouse, earliest eligibility | Starts at 71.5% of your benefit |
| Spouse at 61 | Over 75% |
| Spouse at 63 | Over 80% |
| Spouse at 65 | Over 90% |
| Spouse at survivor full retirement age (66–67) | Up to 100% |
| Child | Generally 75% |
Two limits apply. A family maximum caps the combined total, and SSA may reduce everyone's payment proportionally to stay under it — though an ex-spouse's benefit does not count toward it. And if a survivor is eligible for both a survivor benefit and their own retirement benefit, they choose one; the two are not added together. They can switch later, which is why a widow might take the survivor benefit first and move to her own retirement benefit at 70 when it peaks.
To use any of this you need your own figures, not averages. Your Social Security Statement shows what your record would produce — the 2026 Social Security guide covers how to read it.
The gap in the middle, which is the part worth insuring
Now read two of those rules next to each other.
The spouse's child-in-care payment ends when there is no longer a child under 16. The child's own payment continues to 18, or 19 if still in school full time. And the spouse qualifies again in their own right from age 60.
Three dates, and they do not line up.
So picture a household where one parent dies when the surviving partner is 38 and the youngest child is 6. Both are paid for about ten years. When that child turns 16 the surviving spouse's payment stops — while the child is still at school, still at home, still dependent — and the household's survivor income falls by more than half overnight. The child's own payment runs on for another two or three years, then stops as well.
The surviving spouse is now about 48, with no survivor income at all. The next time Social Security pays them anything as a survivor is age 60.
Those twelve years are sometimes called the blackout period, and it is not an obscure edge case — it is the ordinary shape of the rules for anyone widowed young with children. The detail that catches people is the first step down: the spouse's payment ending when a child turns 16 rather than 18 is the most commonly misread date in the whole scheme. It also lands at the worst possible moment: the surviving parent is in their fifties, has likely been out of the workforce or working reduced hours, and is approaching their own retirement with a decade of missing contributions behind them.
The $255
There is one more Social Security payment on death, and it is worth knowing precisely so you do not build anything on it.
The lump-sum death payment (opens in a new tab) is a one-time $255. It goes to a surviving spouse, or — if there is no spouse — to certain children: aged 17 or younger, 18 to 19 in full-time school, or any age with a disability that began at 21 or younger. A spouse living at a different address may qualify if they can claim benefits on the deceased's record.
You must apply within two years of the death. It is not paid automatically.
Two hundred and fifty-five dollars will not bury anyone. Claim it, because it is yours, but final expenses are a cost your plan has to cover on its own.
Employer cover is not the plan either
Most people with group life cover through work treat it as their life insurance. It is better described as a useful supplement with two structural problems.
It is usually tied to the job. Cover typically ends when employment does — and losing a job and losing your health are correlated, so the cover tends to disappear at the moment you would most want to keep it, and at an age when replacing it individually costs more.
The amount is set by the employer, not by your household. A multiple of salary chosen by a benefits department has no knowledge of your mortgage or your children's ages.
Read your own plan documents for what happens when you leave, and whether cover can be converted or ported. Then treat whatever survives as a reduction in the gap, not as the answer to it.
The four numbers
Now the arithmetic. Add the first three, subtract the fourth.
1. Income replacement. Not your salary times a number. Ask what annual amount your household would actually need without your income — after the spending that goes with you — and for how many years. The honest horizon is usually until the youngest child is independent, or until a surviving partner reaches their own retirement resources. Not forever.
2. Debts that would transfer. The mortgage balance is the large one. Add any co-signed debt, and community-property debt if you live in such a state. Add final expenses realistically, not at $255.
3. Specific future costs you intend to fund. Education, or lifelong care for a dependant. Be concrete; a number you cannot justify is a number you will not keep up premiums for.
4. What is already there. Savings and investments, existing cover including whatever employer cover survives, your partner's earning capacity, and the survivor benefits calculated above — with the gap years left in as zero, because that is what they pay.
The remainder is your coverage gap. That, not a multiple of salary, is the figure to shop for.
Where the estimate usually goes wrong
Assuming survivor benefits are continuous. They are not, and the gap is the expensive part.
Insuring only the earner. A partner who is not paid is still doing work that would have to be bought — childcare, and the second income the survivor cannot earn while providing it. That has a price, and it is rarely zero.
Using today's mortgage balance for a thirty-year policy. The balance falls every year. A level policy sized to today's debt is over-insured later, which is a reason to reconsider the amount over time rather than to buy less now.
Forgetting that it is a household calculation. If both partners earn, run it twice. The answers will differ.
When to redo this
Not annually. Redo it when something structural changes: a birth, a house purchase, a divorce, a partner leaving or returning to work, a material change in income, or a child's needs turning out to be lifelong.
And redo it when the term you bought is approaching its end, while you still have time to act. That is the one deadline in this article that nobody sends you a reminder for.
Sources
- SSA — Who can get Survivor benefits (opens in a new tab)
- SSA — What you could get from Survivor benefits (opens in a new tab)
- SSA — Lump-sum death payment (opens in a new tab)
- 20 CFR § 404.341 — When mother's and father's benefits begin and end (opens in a new tab)
- NAIC — Life Insurance Buyer's Guide (opens in a new tab)
- NAIC — Life Insurance consumer information (opens in a new tab)
This article is general information for a United States audience. It is not financial, tax, legal or insurance advice, and it does not recommend any insurer, policy or amount of cover. Social Security survivor eligibility and payment amounts depend on your own earnings record and circumstances, and the rules are revised from time to time — confirm your position with SSA or a licensed professional before acting. Last reviewed 12 September 2026.
