What the checkup asks — and why

We designed the checkup as an anti-form. Eight questions, each earning its place, each mapped to one thing we’re trying to understand about your family’s financial protection. No trick questions. No hidden lead-scoring. Here’s a walkthrough.

Family

Who counts on your income? This is the single most important input. If no one depends on you financially — you’re young, single, no debts — the honest answer is that you probably don’t need life insurance at all, and the checkup will tell you exactly that rather than sell you something.

We ask about dependents, not household size, because a working spouse without children is a very different picture from a single parent with three kids.

Income

Roughly what do you take home? This drives the income-replacement side of the calculation. We use a range, not an exact figure, because the number moves and we don’t need precision — we need a neighborhood.

Debt

Mortgage, loans, cards? Debt doesn’t disappear when someone dies. The mortgage keeps demanding its monthly payment. Coverage that clears the debts frees the surviving household from servicing them out of a smaller income.

Existing coverage

Do you already have life insurance? Group policies through work, older individual policies, spousal coverage — all of it matters, because your gap is what you have minus what you need. If you’re already covered, the checkup should tell you so and stop.

We ask about the amount if you have one, because “I have some through work” is often $50k of coverage against a $1.5M need — which is functionally the same as no coverage.

Life stage

Where are you in life? A 28-year-old with a new baby and a 30-year mortgage is a different risk profile than a 58-year-old whose kids just finished college. Same income, wildly different need.

What comes out the other side

A Protection Score from 0 to 100 that reads like a fitness score, not a sales pitch. A breakdown across the four dimensions above so you can see where you’re strong and where the gap sits. A rough range for how much additional coverage might close the gap — expressed as a band, not a false-precision number.

And if the honest answer is you’re in a great spot, that’s what you’ll see. The checkup is designed to earn your trust by being willing to tell you not to buy anything.