For most people, determining how much life insurance one should have is not an easy task. Confronting the subject of death is difficult enough, but add to that the question, “How much is my life worth?” and you now have a subject that most folks would rather avoid.

We have looked at many life insurance calculators that have line items for every family expense one can think of and multiply those expenses by an estimated time one would need income to support those expenses.

While this is a great exercise, we have found the task to be too time-consuming for most people. This income-replacement approach has been used by many life insurance agents over the years and it’s fairly simple to use.