When we purchased personal life insurance for our (business) years ago, I discovered that the insurance companies would not insure you for much over your earning capacity.

Fo instance, if you flip burgers at McDonalds, it would be almost impossible to purchase a million dollars of life insurance. (you may have trouble even with a 200 k policy)

This seems to keep fraud in check. they say "why would you need that much ins to life the pathetic life you are currently living"?

When purchasing additional insurance, you always need to declare how much insurance you already have. They take all of that into consideration.

Personally, if you insure yourself for about twice what your current debt load is, that may be about ballpark what is reasonable. (counting home loan, car loans, credit cards, etc) (noone here has a fgf loan, right?)

And Gus is right, LTD is very important too!

I would reccomend talking to or researching an investment advisor about all of this. It opened my eyes a lot about 12 years ago when I became a business Owner. There are so many pieces to the puzzle, and unless your wife has plans for you that you are unaware of, you may end up spending more money than you need to. It also depends on how big your nest egg and 401k plans are as well.