Human Life Value Calculator
Estimate the right life-insurance cover for your family based on income, expenses, debts, and future goals — using the standard Human Life Value (HLV) method.
Understanding the Human Life Value Method
The Human Life Value (HLV) approach is the most widely accepted way to size life-insurance cover. Rather than picking an arbitrary multiple of salary, HLV calculates the present value of every future dollar your family would lose if you were no longer there to earn it — then adds the lump-sum obligations they would inherit and subtracts whatever financial buffer already exists.
The HLV formula in plain English
- Income to replace — Your annual income minus the share you spend purely on yourself. The remainder is what actually supports your family.
- Years of working life left — Retirement age minus your current age.
- Present value — Future income is discounted back to today using a realistic post-tax investment return (the rate your family could earn on the payout).
- Plus debts and goals — Mortgage, car loans, planned education and marriage costs are added in full because they would need to be paid eventually.
- Minus existing buffers — Liquid savings, investments, and any life cover you already have reduce the new cover you need to buy.
Why HLV beats “10× your salary”
Rules of thumb like 10× or 15× annual income ignore your age, expenses, debts, and existing wealth. A 30-year-old with a young child and a fresh mortgage needs far more cover than a 55-year-old whose home is paid off and whose children are independent — even if both earn the same. HLV captures these differences automatically.
Tips for using your result
- Treat the output as a minimum target — your family will likely face inflation, medical events, and lifestyle changes you cannot model precisely today.
- Re-run the calculation every two to three years, or after any major life event (marriage, child, home purchase, large debt payoff).
- Term insurance is usually the cheapest way to buy this much cover. Compare quotes from multiple insurers for the same sum-assured and tenure.
- Consider riders for critical illness and accidental disability — they protect against the “living” scenarios that HLV does not directly model.