Nothing is more important than ensuring your family is protected no matter what happens to you or your spouse. Young families are even more at-risk in the event of a loss of one or more parents – particularly because it is during these early years that families develop nest eggs, college funds and money to eventually pass on to heirs.

New parents have to make a host of important decisions, including whether to buy life insurance for their children. This might not make sense to some. After all, do kids need life insurance? Not surprisingly, there are two sides to this argument.

Life insurance is critical for the long-term financial security and stability of a family. Young families cannot afford to lose a spouse and a parent. Financially, each parent is needed to cover costs of bills, mortgages, loans, health insurance, general expenses, and school costs. Not only would the loss of a spouse and a parent be detrimental to the current influx of money to cover bills, but there would be added expenses, such as funeral costs and the costs of organizing and running the estate. In order to protect the long-term interests of a young family, the parents need to get term life insurance. Term life insurance can cover funeral costs and other added expenses, such as medical bills. Life insurance can also ensure that the family can keep up with mortgage payments and bills and provide monetary safety for your family.

Everybody wants to believe that his or her children will live to grow old. Unfortunately, tragedies do occur and some children pass away when they are young. Whether it is by an accident or disease, early death can have a financial burden on a family. The parents will have to pay for funeral expenses and possibly medical bills that their health insurance did not cover. The emotional strains can be magnified with the financial burdens.

Family insurance rates rise right along with the cost of living. And even those of us who don’t have a sensitive aversion to discussing life insurance often avoid it for one simple fact: cost. But there are ways that you can get affordable family insurance.

• Stop smoking now. Not tomorrow or next year, but right now. Even if you forget for a moment the damage you may already have done, there’s the damage you’re doing to yourself as a result of putting off something that you should have dropped years ago. But we’re not here to chastise you for having bad habits. What we will do, however, is remind you that you’ll end up paying incredibly high family insurance rates if you don’t.