If I have AD&D through my employer, should I STILL purchase term life insurance?
Most likely, yes. AD&D is insurance against a specific type of peril.  Life insurance is, too, but there are fewer exceptions to payout.  I'd imagine that you'd have to die by accident, or be dismembered but not die, for it to pay out.  The exceptions in the policy are what you need to be concerned about. If loss of you (and your income) would be of financial hardship to your wife and your goals for your family, then you should consider life insurance. (If you do, consider having your wife buy the policy on you, and make sure it's clear that her funds were paying for it.  It may be possible to avoid having the payout go into your estate that way.) It probably does make sense for you to buy term life insurance separate from your employer, for a few reasons: There are a number of life insurance calculators on the web. Try two or three -- some of them ask different questions and can give you a range of answers regarding how much coverage you should have. Then take a look at some of the online quote sites -- there are a couple that don't require you to enter your personal information, just general age/health/zip code so you can get an accurate quote for a couple of different coverage levels without having to deal with a salesman yet. (It was my experience that these quotes were very close -- within $20/year -- of what I was quoted through an agent.)  Using this information, decide how much coverage you need and can afford. If you're a homeowner, and the insurance company with whom you have your homeowner's policy offers life insurance, call them up and get a quote. They may be able to give you a discount because of your existing relationship; sanity check this against what you got from the quotes website. I think that mbhunter hit the nail on the head regarding your question. I just want to add that having a policy that isn't sponsored by your employer is a good idea... employer policies are regulated by the federal government via ERISA. Independent policies are state regulated, and usually have better protections. Also, look for a policy that allows you to increase your coverage later without medical qualification so you don't need to overbuy insurance initially.
Edit: Let's forget about Wikipedia.  From the horse's mouth: The cafeteria plan rules require that a health FSA provide uniform coverage throughout the    coverage period (which is the period when the employee is covered by the plan).  See Proposed    Treasury Regulations Section 1.125-5(d).  Under the uniform coverage rules, the maximum amount    of reimbursement from a health FSA must be available at all times during the coverage period.  This    means that the employee’s entire health FSA election is available from the first day of the plan year    to reimburse qualified medical expenses incurred during the coverage period.  The cafeteria plan    may not, therefore, base its reimbursements to an employee on what that employee may have    contributed up to any particular date, such as the date the employee is laid-off or terminated.  Thus,    if an employee’s reimbursements from the health FSA exceed his contributions to the health FSA at    the time of lay-off or termination, the employer cannot recoup the difference from the employee. (emphasis added)  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1012060.pdf Uniform Coverage Rule The IRS has required that “health FSAS must qualify as accident or health plans. This means    that, in general, while the health coverage under the FSA need not be provided through a    commercial insurance contract, health FSAS must exhibit the risk-shifting and risk-distribution    characteristics of insurance.” This concept has led to the “uniform coverage” rule.  The uniform­coverage rule requires that the maximum amount of an employee’s projected    elective contributions to a health FSA must be available from the first day of the plan year to    reimburse the employee’s qualified medical expenses, regardless of the amount actually    contributed to the plan at the time that reimbursement is sought.  Citing proposed Treasury Regulations Section  the IRS General Counsel has    determined that:  “Under the uniform coverage rules, the maximum amount of reimbursement from    a health FSA must be available at all times during the coverage period. The    cafeteria plan may not, therefore, base its reimbursements to an employee on what    that employee may have contributed up to any particular date, such as the date the    employee is laid-off or terminated. Thus, if an employee’s reimbursements from    the health FSA exceed his contributions to the health FSA at the time of  or    termination, the employer cannot recoup the difference from the employee.”  This rule is unfair and also constitutes a disincentive to establishing FSAS because of the    exposure to out-of pocket expenditures arising from employees who leave the company.  NSBA believes that the uniform coverage rule should also be revised if the  or lose-   it rule is changed. Revising the use-it or lose-it rule while leaving the uniform coverage rule unchanged will introduce an inappropriate asymmetry to FSAS. An employer should    be allowed to deduct any negative amount arising from insuftîcient employee    contributions from a terminating partieipant’s last paycheck. http://www.ecfc.org/files/legislative-news/NSBA_(David_Burton).pdf (emphasis added)  Now, that's some fresh bitterness for you right there.  (Dated August 17, 2012) Make sure you have sufficient insurance. Luckily, my wife and I had insurance on our mortgage, and term life insurance on both of us. Statistically speaking, insurance is a poor investment. However, when my wife was killed 263 days after our wedding, I was very happy to have it. Note that it took almost five months to pay out, though this was partly due to a Canada Post strike earlier this year; as such, you'll need sufficient emergency funds. I was able to continue working (just about), but still needed approximately $30,000. $10,000 within 24 hours, another $10,000 within 7 days, and the remainder sometime later, to cover funeral expenses. You may also want to consider a will. Neither of us had one as we both had made the decision that we were fine with the other partner receiving the entire estate. If you are not happy with this, or if your situation is more complex, you'll need a will. Whole life in most instances is a very bad plan. It's marketed as a life insurance policy wrapped in an investment but it does neither very well. The hidden caveat of whole life is that the investment goes away if you die.  Say for example I have a $100,000 whole life insurance policy and over the years I have paid in enough to have a $15,000 cash value on the policy. If I die, my family gets $100,000 and the cash value is lost. With term life you can get a substantially higher amount of coverage for a smaller payment. If you invest the difference you end up not only with better coverage, but a better cash value from the difference if you don't die (which is what we all hope for anyways). As JackiYo said, your insurance should be designed around replacing lost income/value.  You should get 10x your annual income in term life insurance. When you do your tax return, your total income from the year from all sources is added up. So you will need to include your employment income as well as your contractor income. Any tax taken off at source through PAYE will then be deducted from how there is to pay. So whether you pay the tax or your employer pays it, it should end up the same, although the timing will differ. There will be differences in National Insurance treatment, and you don't necessarily have a free option to choose which happens - the nature of your relationship may mean you have to be classed as either employed or self-employed under HMRC rules. "You are kind of thinking of this correctly, but you will and should pay for insurance at some point.  What I mean by that is that, although the insurance company is making a profit, that removing the risk for certain incidents from your life, you are still receiving a lot of value.   Things that inflict large losses in your life tend to be good insurance buys.  Health, liability, long term care, long term disability and property insurance typically fall into this category.   In your case, assuming you are young and healthy, it would be a poor choice to drop the major medical health insurance.  There is a small chance you will get very sick in the next 10 years or so and require the use of this insurance.  A much smaller chance than what is represented by the premium.  But if you do get very sick, and don't have insurance, it will probably wipe you out financially.  The devastation could last the rest of your life.   You are paying to mitigate that possibility.  And as you said, it's pretty low cost.   While you seem to be really good at numbers it is hard to quantify the risk avoidance.  But it must be considered in your analysis. Also along those lines is car insurance.  While you may not be willing to pay for ""full coverage"" it's a great idea to max out your personal liability if you have sufficient assets." Term life insurance makes sense if you will have a need for money if someone dies.  If you (and your brothers) do not have enough money currently for a proper burial for your father, then you might consider term insurance to cover this.  If you already have the money to cover this (or can save for it in a short amount of time), then you are better off financially to not purchase the insurance. Estimate what you think it will cost for a burial, then determine if you have this money available to you.  If you already do, then don't purchase the insurance. If you do not have this money available to you, then you can look into a term life insurance policy on your father.  You definitely do not want a whole life insurance policy.  This will cost many more times what a term policy costs.  A term policy is a policy with an expiration date. For example, let's say that you determine that you will need $10,000 when your father dies for the funeral and burial.  You could get a 10-year policy on your father for $10,000.  Over the next 10 years, besides paying your premiums, save up $10,000 ($1,000 each year) in some type of savings/investing account.  Hopefully, your father will still be around 10 years from now, and you won't need the insurance policy anymore, because you will have saved enough to cover the costs when the time comes.  Doing this will almost always cost you less than getting a whole life policy, which never expires, but has much higher premiums. There are also 20-year term policies, which will cost more, but will give you more time to save up your fund.  The costs for these policies depend on your father's age, so get a quote for both and decide what will work for you. Buy term and invest the rest is in fact the easiest plan.  Just buy the term insurance based on your current and expected needs. Review those needs every few years, or after a life event (marriage, divorce, kids, buying a house...) For the invest the rest part: invest in your 401K, IRA or the equivalent. There are index funds, or age based funds that can help the inexperienced. Those index funds have low costs; the age based funds change as you get older.  The biggest issue with the whole life type products is that what your care about for the term insurance doesn't mean that the company  has a good investment program. You also want to have the ability to decide to change insurance companies or investment companies without impacting the other. Sorry to hear about your spouse's health issues. May he have a speedy and, as far as possible, full recovery. The Patient Protectection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka Obamacare) is now the law of the land. Among its many provisions are that insurers may no longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, they may not put lifetime caps on benefits, and they may not charge different premiums based on any criteria except age cohort and geographic area (i.e. rates may be higher for 50 year olds than 30 year olds, but sick and healthy 50 year olds living in the same area pay the same). If he gets government health coverage because he's on disability, this may not matter. On the other hand, you might find it better to put him on your employer's policy, because you like the coverage better, the employer covers part of the dependent premium, or some other reason. In any case, they can't discriminate against him or you based on his condition. ETA: Rates may vary by geography as well as age.