DIME is a four-part checklist for how much life insurance replaces when a working parent dies: Debt (non-mortgage debts plus final expenses), Income (your annual income times the number of years your family would need it), Mortgage (the balance to pay off so they can keep the home), and Education (a fund per child). You add the four together, then subtract what the family already has — liquid savings and any existing cover — to get the net amount to buy. It's more thorough than a flat income multiple because it looks at your actual obligations, not just your paycheck.

The 10× rule (buy ten times your income) is a fast sanity check, and this tool shows it right next to the DIME figure. But it's only a shortcut. It ignores your mortgage and how many children you're putting through school, so it under-insures families with a big mortgage or several kids — and it returns almost nothing for a non-earning parent, who still needs cover. Use DIME as the real number and the 10× as a gut check. When the two disagree by more than about 30%, the calculator flags it and suggests a professional review.

They're illustrative, not quotes. The figure is interpolated from a published rate table (Policygenius Price Index, February 2025) for a healthy non-smoker on a 20-year level term. Crucially, premiums do not scale linearly with coverage — there's a fixed policy cost, so the price per $1,000 falls as the amount rises. Doubling the cover does not double the premium. Your actual price depends on age, health, tobacco use, term length, gender, insurer, and your state — smokers pay roughly three times more, and women pay roughly 15–23% less than men. Always get real quotes.

The default is about $130,000 per child, which is roughly four years of the total cost of attendance at a public in-state university — $30,990 a year for 2025-26, per the College Board. That's an average: private colleges run far higher (about $65,470 a year), costs vary widely by state, and grants and scholarships often bring the net price down. Adjust the figure to the kind of education you're planning for, or set it to zero if you'd rather size cover for income and debts alone.

You can enter it under cover you already have, but treat it with caution. Employer group life is usually not portable — if you change jobs or are laid off, it typically doesn't come with you, so it may not be there when your family actually needs it. Many planners suggest owning enough individual cover to stand on its own and treating group cover as a bonus on top, rather than subtracting it dollar-for-dollar from what you buy.

For income replacement in a young family, term life is the usual fit, and the term is typically matched to how long your family depends on your income — often 20 to 30 years for a new parent, long enough to cover the years until the children are grown and the mortgage is paid. The illustrative premium here assumes a 20-year level term. A level term keeps the same premium for the whole period, which makes budgeting simple.

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