How To Value Your Spouse or Partner
Published / Last Updated on 14/11/2014
Video explores how to value your spouse or civil partner. What would it cost if you lost them? We have a value your spouse calculator tool for you to play with too.
Transcript:
“Hello there. Phew! How valuable is your wife? How valuable is your husband? How valuable is your civil partner? I bet I’ve ‘set the cat amongst the pigeons now’.
Right, on a serious side, how valuable is your spouse or partner? What I would like you to do is imagine that your spouse, your partner, they’re at home, they look after the children or they do the cleaning or they do the ironing, the washing, they cook your meals for you, they take care of the home, their role in life their job is the homeworker [homemaker].
What if you lost your partner and you now have become: “right, I need a child-minder, I need a cleaner, I need to cook, a chef, etc.? Now, I know I am taking that to extremes but imagine how much you would have to pay to do that all how much would you have to do in terms of giving up work or going part-time or something like that to look after the children or to deal with the home?
That is the real value of your spouse or your civil partner. Okay, I’ll give you some numbers here: let's say for example, you valued [this] at right, well that is worth to us as a family, as a unit £200 per week. £200 per week is what it would cost me if I needed a chef, a cleaner, somebody to do my washing, somebody to look after the children, pick them up from school etc.
£200 per week is a salary for the year of £10,400. £10,400 is what it's going to cost you to replace your homeworking spouse or partner.
Okay, so how do I insure that [risk]? How should I insure my spouse or my civil partner? My view here is, broadly speaking. look at a multiple of around 20 times what the value of your spouse or civil partner is.
So if it's £10,400 is the agreed nominal salary at £200 per week then multiply £10,400 by 20 and you get a figure of £208,000. So if you lost your spouse or civil partner or if they were extremely ill, they had a serious illness a critical illness, cancer, heart problems etc. they need to be insured, even just on £200 per week as a nominal salary of in the order of about £208,000.
That's the real value of your spouse or partner just on that simple example.
Now, why did I choose 20 times, so 20 times the nominal salary £10,400? For the plain and simple reason is: in the example, if your spouse or civil partner passes away, if they die, you then receive £208,000 as a lump sum. If you invested that and got 5% per annum, if you're lucky, that'll give you an income of £10,400 a year. It's as simple as that.
So what I have done, what I've got an our websites is a ‘value of your spouse’ calculator. I know it’s a bit of fun but value your spouse. if you have a husband, wife, civil partner that does a lot of things at home whilst you're away at work, that you think: “right, I would need some help to deal with those things, to pick up the children from school, to do the washing, to do the cleaning, to do XYZ”, [then] have a play with the value of your spouse calculator.
How valuable is your spouse? As far as protection is concerned insuring them, then as ever, me and we will weigh up the pros and cons of fee-based life insurance or critical illness protection versus commission based. Thank you very much watching, I hope you enjoy playing on the value of a spouse calculator."
