Should one get rapidly decreasing life insurance policy if it was offered

[rob in cal]

   I understand why some people purchase term life insurance.  One thing that is rarely brought up to my knowledge is that for big savers who have insurance for their minor children, there is a rapidly decreasing need for the initial amount that they purchase.  This amount should be plunging due to their massive savings year by year, and the fact that their children are getting older, and thus have less years to need the insurance.  This is a double whammy of declining need.  So, it almost seems as if mustachians who want life insurance should buy, if it were offered, two or three year term policies, and then when that policy expires a much smaller amount for the next few years (much smaller because they've saved so much over the last three years, and their kids are three years older), and so on, kind of like an amortizing form of term life insurance.

[mxt0133]

I agree with what you are saying but it's hard to get a policy that will accommodate the cash flow you are describing.  What some people do is to take out policies of varying terms, for example 100k 5 year, 300k 10 year, 500k 15 year, ect.  It behaves in a similar fashion where the sum of policy amounts decrease over time as the policy holder builds up their assets.  On thing to consider is not just total policy amount but the purchasing power of such a policy.

When doing this calculation for my own insurance needs when my first child was born.  There were a lot of factors that basically made my head hurt.  Then I looked up social security death benefits and that help me with simplifying my total insurance amount as well as calculations.  I decided to over insure by about 20% because a 1 million dollar policy was a nice round number and left it at that.  I figured I could change policies in a few years if needed if my financial position changed dramatically and that getting one now was better than getting a perfect one later.