The main purpose of life insurance is to provide financial stability to the breadwinner’s dependent family members in the event of his untimely death. Today it is more common to find women who are financially independent with careers; yet there are a significant number of them who choose to stay at home and take care of the house and their young children.

In such families, it is usually only the husband who takes a life cover for himself as the housewife is perceived to have no monetary value. Even the life insurance companies prefer insuring working people – many of them do not offer to insure housewives or have an upper limit on the maximum insurance cover which can be provided, that too subject to the husband’s income and existing cover! They do have a seemingly very valid argument for this – while the loss of  a stay at home mom or wife is an irreparable loss for the family in emotional terms, since she doesn’t contribute to the family income in any way, it doesn’t have any monetary impact. And since the loss of income is what an insurance policy is supposed to protect against, it doesn’t make sense to insure her and is viewed as an unwanted expense.

But before one is quick to arrive at this conclusion, consider the practical aspect – a housewife does a lot of multitasking which goes totally unappreciated – most times she is a cook, a nanny, teacher, housekeeper, a nurse , a driver- all rolled into one. Her sudden absence would mean that the husband would have to find replacements (have used plural as he will not find a single other person who can handle all these as his wife did J) for all these above mentioned jobs in order to run his household efficiently. And for sure, all this costs money.

So, while a housewife doesn’t earn money for the family, she surely helps save a lot of money which would have to be spent if she isn’t around. An insurance policy in her name would provide her family the additional financial means to meet these liabilities which would arise if she were to pass on suddenly.