"I have life insurance through my job" — is that enough?

If you get life insurance through work, you have a head start most people don't. It's free or close to it, it didn't require a medical exam, and it's real coverage. So this isn't an article about how your work policy is bad — it isn't. It's about two questions worth answering honestly: is it enough, and will it be there when your family actually needs it? For most people, the answer to both is "not quite."

What your work policy gets right

Let's start with the good, because it's real. Group life insurance through an employer is usually free or costs just a few dollars a paycheck. It almost never requires a medical exam, which matters a lot if your health isn't perfect — you may be covered for something an individual policy would rate up or decline. And it's automatic; you didn't have to do anything. If you have it, keep it. What follows isn't "drop your work coverage." It's "don't mistake it for the whole plan."

The amount is probably lower than it sounds

Most group policies cover one to two times your annual salary. That sounds like a lot until you measure it against what your family would actually need. The common guideline is ten to twelve times your income — enough to replace your paycheck for years, cover the mortgage, and not force your family to sell the house in the same year they lose you.

Run the numbers on yourself. If you earn $60,000 and your job provides $120,000 in coverage, you feel covered — but against the 10x guideline, you're carrying a gap of roughly $480,000 to $600,000. The policy is real. The shortfall is too. It's one of several gaps most people don't know they have.

It belongs to the job, not to you

This is the one most people never think about. Your group coverage is tied to your employment, which means it's only yours as long as the job is. Change companies, get laid off, or get sick enough that you can't work, and the coverage usually ends — often at the exact moment your family is most exposed.

And here's the trap inside the trap: if your health has changed since you were hired — a new diagnosis, a few more years, a condition that developed — you might not qualify for a new individual policy at a good rate, or at all. The coverage you were counting on disappears right when you can least afford to replace it. You also have no control over it while you have it: your employer can reduce the benefit, switch carriers, or end the plan entirely, and you don't get a vote.

"I'll just take it with me" — usually you can't

A lot of people assume group coverage is portable, like rolling over a 401(k). It rarely is. Some plans let you "convert" your coverage when you leave, but conversion is typically to a permanent whole life policy at a much higher premium, within a short window, with no shopping around. Most people look at the price, decide to deal with it later, and let it lapse — and then they're uninsured without quite realizing when it happened.

It ends right when life doesn't

Even if you stay at the same job your whole career, most group life coverage ends or shrinks dramatically at retirement. But the need doesn't retire when the paycheck does. You may still have a mortgage, a spouse who depends on your savings, final expenses you don't want to leave behind, or something you want to pass on. Group coverage is built around your employment, not around your life — and those two timelines don't match.

So what should you actually do?

Not panic — that's the main thing. The move here isn't to drop your work coverage; it's free, keep it. The move is to treat it as the floor and build the rest yourself.

For most people that means owning an individual term policy for the gap between what your job provides and what your family would actually need. Individual term is portable — it's yours no matter where you work, or whether you work — the rate is locked in, and the coverage doesn't vanish when you hand in your badge. And because rates rise with age and depend on your health, the cheapest this coverage will ever be is right now. Locking in your own policy while you're young and healthy is the single most cost-effective decision in life insurance.

None of this means your employer did anything wrong by offering group coverage — it's a genuine perk. It just was never designed to be your entire safety net. Knowing the difference, and knowing your number, is the whole game.