It’s alarming to me the amount of women that don’t have life insurance – working or not. And what surprises me is that it seems to be the norm… “Oh, you don’t have life insurance? ::shrug:: neither do I. My husband has it, though!” Why is it expected that the man of the family has life insurance, but the woman doesn’t need it?

I learned from this article that about 100 years ago women simply weren’t able to buy life insurance. Women weren’t providing enough value, apparently. But times have changed.… of course women can get insured now and of course we have value. Of the women that do obtain life insurance, most of them are working and bringing in an income for their family. If something happened to them (knock on wood), their policy would help with that loss of income.

So what about stay-at-home-moms??? They aren’t working to bring in any household income, so what value do they have? What needs to be replaced if something happens to them?

Well, THIS stay-at-home-mom would like to tell you! What do I do when the husband is at work? I raise two kids. We’ve all seen the studies that estimate the value of a housewife or a stay-at-home-mom, if we were to be paid for all that we do. Hello, home CEO! If something were to happen to me, Steve would need to continue working full-time and bringing home his income to support the kids, keep the house, pay the bills, etc. BUT… the kids! He’d suddenly have to pay for daycare and anything else lacking from my absence. It would certainly be expensive and it would be an unexpected and unplanned for expense.

So do I have life insurance? You bet. It’s not as high in value as my husband’s life insurance because it doesn’t need to be, based on his income, but it’s there. It will help protect my family if heaven forbid something happened… the same way we’d be protected by my husband’s policy if something happened to him.

When we were getting the loan for our new house, I was chatting with the bank loan officer. Somehow this topic came up and she joked, “Men just seem to think they’ll simply find a new wife and things will be just fine! But they don’t realize… they’ve got baggage and it’s not that easy!”

There are different plans and values you can select from, you just need to find the right one for your family and your needs. Spending money on life insurance not something you can afford? I love the life insurance budget calculator from Genworth Financial because it helps you select small areas you can cut back on each month (helpful for budgeting your money for anything, really!) and with each click you can see how much your coverage increases. For example, if I cut back on eating out once or twice a month to save about $40, my coverage goes from $500,000 to $1,500,000. I could check off less coffee from Starbucks, but.…

Do you have life insurance? Have you had a discussion with your spouse about it?

Information for this post is sourced from Genworth Financial in partnership with the SheHeard Influencer Network. I really do have my own life insurance and all opinions are my own.