These guides cover the insurance that protects your household’s income and health: life insurance for the people who depend on you, disability and critical illness coverage for when you can’t work, and health, dental and long-term care insurance for the costs provincial plans leave out.
Life insurance basics
- Life insurance in Canada: how it works: the overview of policy types, underwriting, beneficiaries and tax treatment.
- Do you need life insurance, and when to buy it: a decision framework, the life events that create the need, and when it ends.
- How much life insurance you need: the DIME method, income replacement with CPP survivor benefits, and subtracting what you already have.
- What life insurance costs: sample premiums by age, coverage amount, smoking status and policy type.
- Term vs whole vs universal life insurance: how each type works and when permanent coverage fits.
- Is whole life insurance worth it?: the “buy term and invest the difference” math and the cases where whole life holds up.
- Should you cash out a whole life policy?: surrender value, the tax on the gain, and alternatives to a full surrender.
Special situations
- Life insurance through your employer: group coverage amounts, beneficiaries, and the conversion window when you leave.
- Life insurance for seniors: term, simplified issue, guaranteed issue and final expense options after 50.
- Life insurance in estate planning: funding tax at death, equalizing estates, second-to-die policies and insurance trusts.
- Mortgage life insurance vs term life: how a lender’s declining-benefit mortgage coverage compares with an individual term policy.
Buying life insurance: providers and reviews
- Best life insurance companies in Canada: the major insurers compared on products, strength and service.
- Best term life insurance: term rates by insurer, choosing a term length, riders and conversion privileges.
- Canada Protection Plan review: no-medical and guaranteed issue coverage for people who can’t qualify for standard underwriting.
- PolicyMe review: an online agency selling term life policies issued by Canadian Premier Life.
- PolicyAdvisor review: an online broker comparing many insurers.
- PolicyMe vs PolicyAdvisor: which fits which buyer.
Health, disability and critical illness
- Disability insurance: how it works and whether you need it: own vs any occupation, group LTD gaps, CPP-D and EI sickness, and taxation of benefits.
- Best disability insurance providers: insurers compared, with notes by occupation.
- Critical illness insurance: how it works and whether you need it: covered conditions, exclusions, costs and how it pairs with disability coverage.
- Best critical illness insurance: what separates one insurer’s critical illness policy from another’s, with the main Canadian sellers.
- Health insurance in Canada: what provincial plans cover, the gaps, and supplemental health plans.
- Dental insurance and the Canadian Dental Care Plan: individual dental plans, waiting periods and CDCP eligibility.
- Is long-term care insurance worth it?: what it pays, how it is sold in Canada, and the alternatives.
Key decisions in brief
How much coverage. Multiples of income give only a rough estimate; the full coverage calculation adds up debts, income replacement, the mortgage and education, then subtracts savings and existing coverage.
How long a term. A common approach is to match the term to your longest major obligation, such as the mortgage or the years until the youngest child is independent. Choosing a term length sets out the options.
What drives the price. Age at application, smoking status, health history, the amount and the term length set your premium. Life insurance costs by age shows how much each factor moves it.
Who gets the money. Naming a beneficiary directly keeps the death benefit out of your estate and probate. Beneficiary designations and insurance trusts covers the options, and group plan beneficiaries explains why the designation on file with the insurer, not a general will, decides who is paid.
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