How much group life insurance should I elect through my employer?

Elect enough to cover any coverage gap your own policies don't fill, but don't rely on it as your foundation. Employer-paid basic group life is often one to two times salary — take it, it's free. Many plans then let you buy supplemental group coverage up to five or more times salary, sometimes without a medical exam up to a guaranteed-issue limit, which is genuinely helpful if you have health issues that make individual underwriting expensive. The catch is portability: supplemental group coverage usually ends or gets costly when you leave. So a sensible approach is to anchor your protection with a portable individual term policy sized to your family's full need, then use guaranteed-issue group coverage as a bonus layer. One IRS note: employer-paid coverage above $50,000 creates a small amount of imputed taxable income on your paycheck.