Term Life Insurance
Also called: term life, term assurance, level term
Term life insurance covers you for a fixed period — 10, 20 or 30 years — and pays only if you die within it. It's cheap because most policies expire unused: a healthy 35-year-old can insure $1m for 20 years for a few hundred dollars a year. Matching the term to the need is the whole design, which is why the standard advice is a term that ends when the mortgage is paid and the children are independent.