Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: the usual answers — ten times income, or a formula with a friendly acronym — were built for a working household with dependent children. In retirement the income being replaced usually already has a survivor mechanism attached, so the right number is not a multiple of anything. It is the gap. And the gap is frequently zero, which is an answer the calculators are not designed to give.
Work out the gap before you work out the number
Write down what the survivor would actually receive if you died tomorrow: the pension survivor benefit you elected, the Social Security survivor benefit, any annuity that continues, income from assets that pass to them.
The shortfall between that and what the household actually spends is the entire problem. Everything else on this page is arithmetic applied to that one figure — and if it comes out at or near zero, no product changes it.
The survivor gap calculator
Everything here is about the shortfall, not your income. Work out what the survivor would actually receive first — pension survivor benefit, Social Security survivor benefit, annuity continuation — then enter what is missing.
Enter a monthly gap, a debt, or a final-expense figure to see a range.
Why it gives a range and not a number
Because the honest answer is a range. The low figure applies your assets in full and assumes the gap does not grow. The high figure discounts assets by a quarter for sequence and liquidity risk — assets are not always available at the moment they are needed, at the value you expected — and lets the gap grow with prices.
The distance between the two is not a defect in the tool. It is the actual uncertainty, made visible. Any calculator that returns a single confident figure has hidden the same assumptions rather than resolved them.
The frameworks, presented as frameworks
You will meet two conventions and both are reasonable starting points for a working household:
- Income replacement — a multiple of earnings, commonly ten. It answers “how do we replace a salary,” which is the wrong question once the salary has stopped.
- DIME — debts, income, mortgage, education. More structured, and its education limb is usually irrelevant to a retired household while its debt and final-expense limbs are not.
Neither is wrong; both are aimed at a different reader. The gap method above is the retired version of the same instinct.
Before you trust any figure
- Check the survivor elections you have already made. If you took the higher pension and declined the survivor benefit, the insurance is carrying that decision — and cancelling it undoes something permanent.
- Check whether the need is temporary or lifelong. A term policy covering a lifelong gap has an end date the gap does not.
- Check what an existing policy is already worth before buying more — surrender, reduced paid-up and a settlement can each beat starting again at current age.
- Check the estate side. Proceeds are income-tax-free but not estate-tax-free where you own the policy.
We sell no insurance, take no commission, and are paid nothing if you buy a policy. This tool runs entirely in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.
What this tool does not do
Honest gap. It does not model taxes, inflation on specific spending categories, investment returns, or the sequence in which assets would actually be drawn. It assumes the survivor’s own income is already netted into the gap you enter. It is a way of seeing the size of a problem, not a plan — and where the range is wide and the stakes are real, that is the point at which a fee-only planner earns their fee.
See methodology and corrections. General information, not financial advice. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.