is life insurance necessary in my situation?

[leastprime]

Do you need LI, as described? No.
There is a small probability where LI may be useful for expenses in a terminal disease.

It's an inexpensive "call option" if your health is good.
I have term LI on DS since 18 yo. He's now 36. It's a very long call for then student going to college. Later for future grandchildren an d future DIL. He also doesn't need it. It's cost is extremely small to his assets and to our assets.
We (71/74) do not have direct LI. We have death benefit in purchased annuities and purchased LTCi.

[MinivanDriver]

Originally Posted by blahblahyoutoo

I'm in my 30's, married (wife works part time), no kids.
I have a couple of mortgages, several rental properties that are cash flow positive, retirement accounts totaling ~$500k, other brokerage and cash accounts are also sizable amounts, and no debt outside of RE.

I have 1x salary of life insurance that is employer provided that would knock out a big portion of outstanding mortgages but that is all in terms of life ins.

if I pass away, my wife will be fine living off of rental income and she could go full time.

any advice?

A term policy is next to nothing for someone your age.



But I don't think you're thinking of potential future expenses for your wife, your survivor. What if there's a problem with the rental properties? Or what if your loan on the properties has to be renegotiated upon your death?



Will your wife be able to emotionally handle going back to work the day after your funeral? Those things are considerations.



In that situation, a decent life insurance policy is a kindness, not just security for her.

[MinivanDriver]

Originally Posted by JonathanLB

Then you should meet more maybe? All of my income is passive income, and there’s no such thing as “how long would the money last,” I just get richer every single year and the money grows. We don’t need life insurance. If I died, my wife would keep getting richer every year. If investments stopped paying out, she could live on the cash alone with no interest for 40 years. That’d be a long time to have 10 separate investments neither pay cash flow nor sell. So now you’ve heard of a potential widower who doesn’t care about “life insurance.”

Two things:



1) Baloney.
2) We're not talking about you. We're talking about the question of the OP.

[Driver 47]

Term Life policy seconded. (Thirded ?)

[ImmerLernen]

If you're planning to have kids, you should both get policies in place...and sooner rather than later. The younger & healthier you are, the cheaper it is (think 20-25 year term policies). I think pregnancy is considered a higher risk, so that's another reason to get insured beforehand.

I know you say your wife could just go FT, but what if you're in a common accident, you die, and she's disabled to the extent that going FT is no longer an option...or maybe not for some time? Now reverse this scenario -- you're the surviving yet disabled spouse, only you have kid(s). That's why your wife should have a policy, too, if you do decide to have children.

You don't need to over-do things, but consider the different scenarios and take your best guess.