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You just input current lump sum needs; like paying off debts, mortgages, final expenses (burial, funeral, estate administration, probate, medical, etc.), estate taxes, giving (e.g., charities), children's college expenses, etc.

Then you input monthly income the surviving spouse and family needs. This is done in all three time frames: When there are minor children, when there's no minor children and Social Security doesn't pay anything, and at retirement.

Then you input all lump sum amounts that are currently available.

You then input all sources of income the survivor will have even if the breadwinner were to pass away.

Then the life insurance program calculates the differences between the two (needs vs. assets/incomes available). This is the total amount of life insurance needed now.

You can then manipulate everything to project life insurance needs up to 75 years into the future.

The ability to forecast into the future exposes a little-known fact about life insurance needs - they decline substantially every year. See the bottom chart on the Future Needs sheet of the demo and the directions for details.

Life insurance needs decline annually because of three factors. First, every year the insured survives is one less year of earned income by the lost breadwinner that needs to be replaced with insurance.

Next, the amount of lump sum needs decline as debts are paid off, children get through college, and other needs dissipate.

Then last, but not least, assets usually increase annually as saving vehicles are added to and investment accounts grow.

No other life insurance calculator accounts for any of these critical factors adequately. This results in wasting hundreds to thousands annually maintaining unneeded life insurance. For the typical family, the amount of wasted money over a decade or two is enough to buy a car.

Plus, with all of the income and expense manual overrides, you can control lump sums, incomes, and expenses down to the dollar in every year.

This matters because it's important to know exactly how much life insurance you need. Not only is it important to not waste money maintaining too much life insurance, but you also need to know if you've been underestimating your needs.

The only way to know exactly how much to buy, is to input all of the factors that go into calculating how much you need, and then controlling how these needs change in the future.

Although it's set up for families, it can be used for other things too:

º Single people's life insurance needs.

º To see what lump sum it takes to replace a stream of income.

º To guesstimate how much Social Security will pay to survivors, and how it will impact the total picture. Social Security pays for a lot less than people think. You can download free retirement planning software from the Social Security website, so you won't have to guess.

º Lump sum needs, lump sum assets available, and income replacement needs all have their own future projection sheets. This allows you to control all three sections separately, down to the dollar in every year.

º In addition to accounting for generic income needs, you can input up to five additional independent sources of incomes and expenses. You can automatically inflate all ten items or you can manually override them. This gives you total control of every number in every year.

The same with Social Security benefits - you can control every number in every year with this life insurance program.

º It has a detailed table showing all 75 years of cash flows that sum up to determine the true present value of today's needs. This is on a different sheet to keep current and future life insurance needs separate.

º This is the only life insurance software that transparently shows the flow of all calculations. This is important because it displays all of the details one needs to understand the process.

º It then takes this data and makes two stacked area charts showing all expenses, incomes, and deficits that need to be funded with life insurance. This is the only life insurance calculator that has two of these kinds of graphs (most have the bottom chart, but only we have the top one).

º Life insurance is not needed in years where there's more money coming in than being spent.

To account for this, it takes annual cash flow surpluses into account, by using the previous year's surplus to fund the next year's deficit. This is the only life insurance calculator that does this correctly and automatically.

Lack of this feature will ignore years with cash flow surpluses. This will overstate the amount of life insurance needed, which will result in buying too much, which results in wasted money.

º You can account for up to six children's' educations, or similar future spending goals (things that will require more than one year of spending). You can also account for spending on an unlimited number of things that will happen in one year.

º You can integrate detailed data from the College Calculator for maximum accuracy. You can also integrate this module with retirement software, loan amortization schedules, and any other spreadsheet.

º It has a simple percentage-based income replacement calculator, like other life insurance software.

º It has three bar charts with valuable information showing future needs. Competing life insurance programs only have one or two. They are all unprotected so you can make any changes you want.

º Excel's built-in Goal Seek function makes this life insurance tool by far the most flexible, powerful, and functional life insurance software ever created. You can easily do any "What-If" scenario that any other life insurance software can do, plus dozens more they can't.

Using the demo as an example, you can go to cell I27 of the Current Needs sheet, click Tools, Goal Seek, input $300,000, and then go to the Calculation sheet and click a cell like AZ23, then press enter.

This will increase the amount of money the survivor has to earn in 2023 to lower the current life insurance needs from $348,219 to $300,000. Any combination of cells can be used to do any What-If scenario.

Download the (non-functional) Life Insurance Program "demo" (350KB)

Then read the life insurance calculator instructions

Free trial version available for qualifying financial planners

The life insurance software "demo" is the actual program, password protected and saved without the guts. You won't be able to do anything but look at it. You'll receive a non-protected spreadsheet after you buy it.