In the event of your untimely and unfortunate passing, it is a wise decision to leave your family with enough financial backing to be able to pay off bills and still give them enough money to live comfortably with for the remainder of their lives. Purchasing term life insurance is probably the most secure and trusted way of giving your family the financial strength they need to survive without your income. Term life insurance is insurance that can be purchased for a given amount of years. The insurance is usually purchased for any amount of time from 5 to 30 years. It is imperative that the purchaser be aware of all of the facts regarding the insurance before buying it so talk to a trusted insurance agent and get some good advice. Then feel free to shop around to find the best price. Unlike whole life insurance, term life insurance cannot be drawn on so get the least expensive policy that you can get with the features that you desire in the plan. The rest of this article will help you to decide how much of a policy you should get so that everyone is taken care of financially. The first thing you really need to decide is how much total debt that you have. Get all of your bills together and add up the total principal that you owe on everything. This includes mortgage payments, car payments, credit card debt, and any other items that you pay for on a monthly basis. Then take into account the approximate monthly costs of all of your utilities and other payments that your beneficiaries will have to pay each month. Once you have all of that figured out you can go to the next step and decide how much money you need to leave them. It is a wise decision to leave them enough money to pay off the mortgage, car payments, and credit cards. Then make sure that you leave them at least enough money to have the bills paid for the upcoming year. Many insurance agents suggest that you leave your family enough money to be able to live off for up to 10 years and to give them at least $50,000 to put into a savings or money market account. Therefore, if the total sum of your debt was $250,000, you would want to get a policy that gives your beneficiaries a lump sum of about $350,000. Much of this is based upon an average type of lifestyle so make sure that you provide enough for your family to live as comfortably as they lived before your passing. It is in everyone's best interest to get as much insurance as you can afford to pay so that everyone will be protected for as long as you can protect them financially. Dealing with the death of a loved one is difficult enough, so give your family enough financial protection while you still can.