Half of the City Seems to Have Just Moved Here
A meaningful share of Denver’s population moved here within the last several years, drawn by jobs, a lower cost of living than the coasts, or just wanting to be closer to the mountains. That pattern shows up in a specific insurance blind spot. Someone who had solid employer-provided life insurance at their old job assumes the new job’s benefits package covers them the same way, without checking whether the new employer’s group policy is smaller, has a longer waiting period, or doesn’t kick in until after a probationary period ends. In the gap between jobs, a lot of people in Denver are carrying less coverage than they think they are, sometimes for months at a stretch.
Employer group life insurance is also usually a flat amount, often one or two times salary, regardless of what a family actually needs. It’s a fine baseline. It’s rarely enough on its own, and it disappears the moment you leave the job, which in a market with this much job movement is worth planning around rather than being surprised by.
The Self-Employed and Gig Economy Gap
Denver has a large and growing population of independent contractors, gig workers, and small business owners who never had employer group coverage to begin with. If nobody’s ever offered you a workplace policy, there’s no default to fall back on and no natural moment that prompts you to think about it. A private term policy is the only coverage that exists for a lot of these households unless someone deliberately goes and gets one.
Matching the Policy to an Actual Mortgage
Home prices across the Denver metro have moved enough in recent years that a policy sized for an older, smaller mortgage can leave a real gap if it hasn’t been revisited. If you bought your term policy years ago based on what your mortgage looked like then, it’s worth checking that the death benefit still lines up with what you’d actually owe today, particularly if you’ve refinanced, moved, or taken on a larger loan since the policy was written.
What We See Most Often
Most Denver clients land on a 20 or 30 year term, timed to cover the mortgage and the years until kids are grown, which is a reasonable default for most households. What matters more than the exact term length is making sure the coverage amount reflects your current obligations, not the ones you had when you first moved here. If you’re not sure your existing coverage still fits your situation, that’s a quick conversation, not a complicated one, and it’s worth having before assuming an old policy still does the job.