What to do? Life insurence? Critical illness?

A question about : What to do? Life insurence? Critical illness?

I'm in my twenties with one child and another on the way.
I'm currently on Mat leave and am not being paid by work due to not being there long enough.

My partner is 40 is self employed.

We live in a Housing association property.

Neither of us have any kind of insurence if either of us was to die or be so injured/poorly we couldn't work.

What kind of policy would we need to take out and how do we do it?

Many thanks

Best answers:

• In the first instance, look at permanent health insurance (PHI).
  It will replace the income of someone unable to work due to illness or accident. This is especially important for someone self-employed.
  You can set an initial waiting period to reduce the premiums, but this would mean covering this period with savings via an emergency fund.
  In addition, the cheapest form of protection on death is family income benefit. As it pays out on death for each year of the remaining term (until youngest child is 21 or 25?) effectively it's decreasing cover and it's cheaper than level cover as a consequence.
  An IFA or protection specialist would be the best source of advice on such cover. Buying PHI without advice could be a mistake, as there are cheaper options which make it more difficult to claim and which could see you pay more later.
• Savings contingency fund
  PHI
  Life cover
  Pension
  Time to get them all in place.
  Critical illness? Less important if you have good quality PHI.
• Agree if you can afford PHI/Income plan then a critical illness and then life cover but depends on your budget - even at Ј25-Ј30pm you can get a combination of at least 2 of the above