Life Insurance for Mums

Stay-at-home parents should not be undervalued


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By Crispin Bateman
Updated on Tuesday 23 November 2021

mum with daughter and son in the park

Ninety percent of single parent families in the UK are those with a single mum. What happens to the financial security of the children if the worst should happen and that mum passed away?

Thankfully, life insurance is an affordable solution to that frightening thought.

Life insurance for women

In truth, there should be no difference when talking about life insurance for a man or a woman. In today’s world of growing equality, even the idea of singling out women feels slightly distasteful but the truth is that the topic does need some special attention – not because the end product of life insurance is particularly different, but the myths and incorrect long-held beliefs that surround stay at home mums (and single mums in particular) mean that many families are unnecessarily going without cover.

A working family man vs. a single working mum and mums at home

The tired stereotype of a middle-aged man commuting to work in his BMW is someone who doubtless also has life insurance. Flip the image over to a struggling single mum, fitting in a part-time job alongside her responsibilities as a parent, and you might feel forgiven for imagining that she has no life cover, but why is that? Are her financial responsibilities to her family any less important than his? Of course not – if anything, they are that much more important.

Of course, we think BMW-man can afford life insurance while it’s out of reach for the mother. But is that true?

In reality, substantial life cover can start for as little as £6 per month. And how substantial is that? Enough to make sure the mortgage is paid in full and your children’s home is safe. Enough to mean that whoever you choose to care for them when you are gone can afford to keep them fed and clothed.

And while £6 per month might be a stretch for the many struggling single parent families in the UK today, isn’t it worth looking at?

The value of a stay-at-home mother

To anyone who has ever had the job of stay-at-home parent, the level of work and relative value of the stay-at-home mum or dad is rarely disputed. The effective salary of a stay-at-home parent is said to be £80,000 per year, but if you tried to cover all the work covered by a busy parent, from childcare to cooking, £80,000 would be a very low budget indeed!

Sadly, if you die, that could be exactly what happens and without a financial cushion such as that provided by a life insurance policy, it’s going to be very hard to find.

Mums in couple-centric families

It’s not just single mums of course. Take a parent out of the equation in any family and the effect is often devastating. It could mean the direct loss of a salary, or it could have a similar effect as the surviving parent drops away from full time work and tries to find a new work-life balance that satisfies the family needs while maintaining some income.

Just because a stay-at-home or part-time working parent doesn’t bring in the big bucks, doesn’t mean the financial impact of their loss is any less.

Single parent life insurance in the UK

Getting a life insurance quote for the first time can be complicated and confusing, with jargon that seems designed to make the whole experience a headache. No wonder so many people struggle with trusting life insurance companies.

At Compare UK Quotes we have a range of articles explaining the different types of life insurance to you and suggest taking a little time out to get a grounding on the subject before diving ahead. Behind the scenes we have looked at multiple life insurance advisory services and providers and recommend Quick Quote Life as a trustworthy company to contact. Their friendly website has a comprehensive selection of resources to help explain what’s on offer and can be found here.

When looking at life insurance quotes for mums (or similarly for a single dad), don’t undersell yourself. Calculate the cost of providing financial security for your family until they are old enough to provide for themselves and use that as your insurance baseline.

Term-based life insurance (either decreasing term or level term) is the best and most affordable product to provide comprehensive life insurance for mums. Term insurance runs for a number of years and can be set to cover you until your youngest child reaches maturity – this limitation on the cover means that the best life insurance companies in the UK can offer you competitive rates, especially if you are fit and healthy!

How much is life insurance – the way to get the cheapest life insurance quote

Life insurance is all about risk. The more unlikely it is that the insurance company is going to have to pay out, the cheaper the premiums on the policy will be. This means that the following factors all have a major impact on the cost of your life insurance:

  • Your age – the younger you are, statistically the more likely you are to survive to the end of your life insurance term.

  • Your health – your ideal weight and other medical reassurances go a long way to shaving the cost of your premiums.

  • Smoker or non-smoker – the difference here is so monumental that it’s worth giving up smoking just to save the money – both on your life insurance and your monthly free cash! Life insurance companies require you to be completely smoke (and vape) free for a year before being classed as a non-smoker, so don’t delay!

  • Your activities – if you regularly go hang-gliding or shark-baiting then you may have to accept an exclusion, stating that you are not insured should you die while taking part in your hobby.

Having a healthy lifestyle is the key to cheap life insurance.

Life insurance, wills and trusts – making sure your children get the money

It isn’t enough to simply get life insurance and hope the money finds its way to your children as needed. As minors, should you die without a will the insurance money (and anything else you leave for your children) will end up in trust and potentially be locked until they are 18 – rendering the money completely useless for its main purpose!

Read more: 5 Top Tips for Wills, Life Insurance and Inheritance Tax

Make sure you write a will to avoid your estate falling under the rules of intestacy, or look into writing your life insurance into trust to make sure it passes neatly to your intended heirs and is managed according to your instruction.

Joint life insurance – life insurance for father and mother

Joint life insurance is a cheap way to cover both parents in a family situation. It only pays out once (as opposed to two separate single policies) upon the first death, but provides the other parent with the financial security required to pay for the family home and cover the bills for the difficult coming years.

Growing the family – increasing life insurance for a mum-to-be

Having a family is not always as simple as one-child-and-done! There are times in your life when you will want to adjust your life insurance policy, such as adding to it when you are expecting a new addition to the family. While life insurance companies tend to set the policy details in stone, there are times when you can make changes with no penalty – and having more children or buying a larger house represent those times. If your expenditure increases with a larger mortgage or extra mouth to feed, so should your life insurance.

So don’t worry about your life changing – get the policy you need today and rest reassured that your life insurance can grow with your family.

Child life insurance in the UK – is life insurance for mother and child?

Getting a policy that covers your children as well as yourself may seem to be a sensible option, but think it through carefully before opting to cover any dependants. While the loss of a child is emotionally devastating, it is unlikely to have any real financial effect and a life insurance policy to cover someone who doesn’t affect the household income is typically wasted.

There are situations where cover for children makes sense – to cover a funeral, for example – but it is usually better to take the money you would use on a life insurance policy and put it into a savings account instead. In that case, if the very worst happened and you needed to sadly bury a child, some money would have been put aside to help with those costs, but should your child reach maturity without incident, the money has not been lost and a substantial savings fun exists to help them get a head start in the big wide world.

Don’t be drawn in to insuring a child unless you have thought about it carefully and can afford the premiums with little impact.

Free life insurance cover for mums and single mothers

The best life cover is never free – after all, it is a product that provides a significant lump sum upon death and unlikely to be given away.

Some insurance companies however are offering free life insurance for mums until your child’s first birthday.

Sadly, this is little more than a sales tactic to draw you in and make you loyal to the insurance company – the amount of cover you will obtain will be relatively small (no more than £10,000) and is unlikely to provide enough to do more than pay for the funeral.

It’s far better to speak to an advisor, like those at Quick Quote Life, and get a true life insurance package that is tailored to your family’s needs. By doing this, you are not falling into the trap of believing you are providing for your children only for that to not actually be the case.

A quote is free – finding out more with Compare UK Quotes

It may take a little of your time, but contacting Quick Quote Life and getting a comprehensive life insurance quote is free and comes with no obligation to buy. If you don’t have any cover then it is well worth doing and getting life insurance will provide you with the peace of mind you need to fall asleep each night without worry.

Take a look at our article explaining how you could get a life insurance policy with a free gift for more information. 

As always, we at Compare UK Quotes are working hard behind the scenes to bring you the very best financial advice in the UK today. We have an extensive selection of articles about life insurance that will help you make the right decision, so why not take a look and get to grips with the differences between decreasing term assurance designed to pay off a repayment mortgage and the guaranteed acceptance nature of over 50s cover.

Related articles:

Putting Life Insurance in Trust

Life Insurance for the Homemaker

How to Save Money on Your Life Insurance Premiums


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