A recent study by revealed that there are many working women who do not have enough life insurance coverage. In fact, while 80% of employees believed that they had the right amount of coverage, the study revealed that, in actuality, up to 28% of working men and 45% of working women had not adequately considered their needs. According to the study, the life insurance for women coverage was particularly insufficient. When an insurance policy is inadequate, families that are left behind are often not prepared to handle all the death expenses, let alone pay for outstanding debts and other expenses. Visit this page to find out more about the benefits of life insurance.

Women and Life Insurance

When it came to men and women admitting how much coverage they had, men were far less likely to share than women and life insurance benefits varied significantly, along with the knowledge that employees had of what coverage was right for them.

What is a recommended amount of coverage? The Met Life study recommended that each employee have a policy that covered all outstanding debt and up to five years of salary. Of the group polled, as many as 54% of women initially chose a period of only three years of salary. Up to 75% of women did not even factor in outstanding debt into their insurance needs, of which more than half believed that their death benefit would cover these expenses.

Life insurance for women should factor in paying off debt, years of salaried pay, and death benefits. A starting point for most working women may then be about 10 times the average salary.

While a majority of men placed covering future living expenses as the principal priority, women were more concerned with covering death expenses. The entire group was united in their support for the financial future of children in the likelihood of death.

Interestingly, up to 25% of the people polled were ignorant when it came to understanding the basic features of their own life insurance policy, mistakenly believing that term life insurance had unlimited coverage. Term life insurance, however, is usually life insurance for women and men for a fixed period of time. Many employees also did not know that permanent life insurance could build cash value when they pay their premiums. In fact, 30% of employees had no knowledge of using life insurance coverage to assist in estate planning, death benefits, or retirement benefits for men and women and life insurance coverage options also varied significantly.  To find out more about permanent life insurance, check out our article “Various Types of Whole Life Insurance.”