How much money will your family members need after you’re gone? That’s the question this Collegiate Alumni Life Calculator (called CALC) can help you estimate.

Accurately determining how much life insurance you need is a complex process. CALC’s design objective was to avoid both (1) excessive simplicity, which can provide a grossly incorrect estimate, and (2) excessive complexity, which can rob your time for little additional accuracy.

An old "rule of thumb" is to estimate your insurance need at five to ten times your annual earnings. Such a simplistic approach fails to consider current net worth, workplace promotions, ages of family members, and educational status of children, for example.

CALC helps you determine the funds needed for children’s educations, survivor living standards, and spousal retirement. It even considers the value of all you do at home, from cooking dinner to mowing the lawn.

Before using CALC, you should be aware of its basic formula:

Consider using CALC or another calculator each time you have a notable change in your financial life —or at least every five years—to reconfirm that your coverage is sufficient.

If your spouse currently does not earn an income, it might be useful to run CALC twice:

1. The first run would reflect the current amount of your spouse’s income, which is perhaps as low as zero.

2. The second run would reflect your spouse’s anticipated income in your absence. This would reduce your life insurance need now but, obviously, change your family’s lifestyle later.

Before starting, please click here to print the Helpful Hints, as the printed format is easier to follow than the on-screen version.