Editor’s note: First published 2017 | Refreshed October 2025 with updated examples, monthly income benefit comparisons, and underinsurance guidance.

How Much Life Insurance Do I Need in Ireland?

Everyone wants a quick answer to this question, but unfortunately there’s no magic number. The amount of life cover you need depends on your income, your family, and your lifestyle.

Life insurance is designed to replace your income if you die, so your family can keep going financially.

If we all earned identical income, this would be simple. But we don’t — so the right cover is different for everyone.

Not Sure If You’re Underinsured?

Before we dive into the maths, let’s check a few warning signs:

• You only have mortgage protection (great for the bank, not so much for your family)
• Your partner couldn’t maintain the same lifestyle without your income
• You don’t have illness or income protection cover
• You haven’t reviewed your cover in 5+ years

If any of these sound familiar, chances are you’re underinsured. Don’t panic — you’re not alone. The good news is you can fix it today.

👉 For the full list, check out our 5 warning signs you’re underinsured.

Two Ways to Protect Your Family

When it comes to life insurance, you’ve got two main approaches:

1. Leave them a lump sum (e.g. €500,000)
2. Drip-feed a monthly income into their account (e.g. €2,000 per month)

Let’s look at both in more detail.

Lump Sum Life Insurance

Say you earn €50,000 per year and expect to work for another 30 years. That’s €1.5 million in potential earnings. If you died tomorrow, your family loses that future income.

But do you need €1.5 million of cover? Not necessarily.

Your mortgage protection policy will clear the mortgage. And you’ll no longer have personal expenses (food, clothing, your insurances etc), which reduces the total your family needs.

Of course, you don’t need to break out the spreadsheet to figure this out. Use our quick calculator below to get a ballpark figure tailored to your income and family situation:

Monthly Income Life Insurance

Lump sums can be tricky. Imagine your spouse receives €1 million overnight — do they know how to invest it wisely while grieving? We’ve seen families lose big payouts in bad investments.

That’s where Monthly Income Benefit (MIB) comes in. It pays your family a guaranteed monthly income for a set period, risk-free.

Case Study

John was 40. He took out €1 million lump-sum life insurance for €80/month.

The same level of protection via a monthly income policy — paying his family €4,166 every month for 20 years — would’ve cost just €60/month.

Over 20 years, he’d save €4,800 in premiums, and his family would never need to worry about “managing” a lump sum. The income just arrives every month, like a salary.

👉 More on Monthly Income Benefit here

💶 Example: How Much Does Life Insurance Actually Cost?

Let’s take Patrick, 46, non-smoker, looking for €500,000 cover over 20 years.

His monthly premium? Around €66/month.

If he only wants to spend €30/month, he could halve the cover to roughly €250,000.

That’s the beauty of life insurance — it’s flexible. You can adjust the sum insured to fit your budget. Some cover is always better than none.

So no, it’s not “too expensive.” It just depends on what you value protecting most.

⚙️ What Affects the Cost of Your Life Insurance?

• Age: the younger you are, the cheaper it is.
• Health & BMI: higher BMI or health issues increase premiums.
• Smoking: you’ll need 12 months smoke-free to be classed as a non-smoker.
• Term Length: longer cover = higher total cost.
• Type of Policy: whole-of-life is pricier than term or monthly-income cover.

💡 Tip: The earlier you buy, the more you save — premiums stay fixed for the entire term.

Which Option Is Best?

• Lump sum: flexibility, but risk of mismanaging the payout.
• Monthly income: safer, cheaper, easier for families to handle.

Many people combine both — mortgage protection + monthly income benefit + serious illness cover — to strike the right balance.

Over to You

Thanks for reading,
Nick